Walruses in Alaska may have died in stampede

DAN JOLING AP Yahoo News 14 Sep 17;

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Thousands of Pacific walrus are coming to Alaska's northwest shore again in the absence of summer sea ice and not all are surviving.

A survey Monday of a mile of coastline near the Inupiaq Eskimo village of Point Lay found 64 dead walruses, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told The Associated Press.

Most of the animals were younger than a year old. The cause of death is not known, said agency spokeswoman Andrea Medeiros, but stampedes — set off when startled walruses rush to the sea, crushing smaller animals — are a likely suspect.

"Our thinking is, because of the age of the animals — they were young animals — it's likely that it was caused by a stampede, probably more likely than disease, given the age class," Medeiros said.

A polar bear, hunter, airplane or boat can cause a stampede. Alaska Native residents of Point Lay, who may legally hunt walrus for food, expressed concern after seeing an airplane flying near the herd and possibly circling.

"That certainly is a concern," Medeiros said. "That's not what we want people to be doing."

Fish and Wildlife Service guidelines instruct pilots of single-engine planes to stay at least a half-mile away from walruses on land or ice, and if closer, to fly above 2,000 feet (610 meters).

The guidelines call for helicopters and multi-engine aircraft to stay a mile away, or if closer, above 3,000 feet (915 meters). The agency warns that it is only guidance but creating a disturbance is a violation of federal law.

Several hundred walruses came ashore near Point Lay on Aug. 3, the earliest recorded appearance of a herd in a phenomenon tied to climate warming and diminished Arctic Ocean sea ice.

A week later, the number had grown to 2,000. In the past month, 30,000 to 40,000 walruses at times have crowded the beach, Medeiros said.

Walrus dive hundreds of feet to eat clams on the ocean bottom, but unlike seals, they cannot swim indefinitely. Historically, sea ice has provided a platform for rest and safety far from predators for mothers and calves north of the Bering Strait.

However, sea ice has receded much farther north in recent years because of global warming, beyond the shallow continental shelf, over water more than 10,000 feet (3,050 meters) deep. That's far too deep for walruses to reach the ocean bottom.

Instead of staying on sea ice over the deep water, walruses have gathered on shore to rest.

Calves born earlier this year are especially vulnerable when shoulder to shoulder with mature females that weigh more than a ton.

Residents of Point Lay reported three to five dead walruses in early August. A community member who works with the Fish and Wildlife Service counted 64 dead walruses Monday and tagged them so they would not be counted in a later survey.

The agency hopes to send a veterinarian to determine the cause of the deaths. No one has witnessed a stampede.

"Depending on when the last time he did his survey, it may be an accumulation over several weeks," Medeiros said.

Shaye Wolf, climate science director for the Center for Biological Diversity, who wrote the 2008 petition to list walruses as threatened or endangered species, said the Fish and Wildlife Service should review guidelines for protecting walruses.

"These animals are suffering a great deal of stress from climate change, and when they're pushed ashore, they should get very strong protections from disturbances," she said.

The ultimate threat to walruses is the rapid loss of sea ice due to climate disruption, she said, adding that rollbacks of climate change protections by the Trump administration will further endanger the animals.

Ice in the Chukchi Sea has not reached its minimum for 2017. Walruses likely will keep coming ashore until ice starts to re-form with the onset of winter, Fish and Wildlife said.

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Australia: Seals at tourism hotspot suffering slow and painful deaths caused by helium balloons

Nicole Asher ABC 23 Feb 17;

Helium balloons are killing wildlife at one of Victoria's most popular nature tourism destinations.

An Australian fur seal is the latest animal to be saved from a painful death caused by a burst balloon.

Researchers at Phillip Island are reporting that an increasing number of birds and animals are ingesting, or becoming tangled in, the remnants of burst helium balloons.

A young fur seal was saved by researchers this week after it was discovered with balloon ribbon wrapped around its neck.

Without intervention, the seal would have suffered and died a slow death while it grew with the ribbon cutting into its flesh.

The researchers said the birds and animals they saved were just the tip of the iceberg.

Phillip Island Nature Parks research manager Peter Dann said they did not know how many animals were falling victim to balloons and the ribbons, known as bands.

He said the seal rescued this week was one of the lucky ones.

"Our rangers managed to catch it and found that it had a balloon band wrapped around its neck several times; they found it was cutting into the animal's flesh," Dr Dann said.

"It would have died quite slowly in the long term if they hadn't been able to remove it, but now its prospects of recovery are extremely good.
"Birds too — short-tailed shearwaters, or mutton birds that Phillip Island's famous for, as well as penguins — are particularly prone to picking up things on the surface of the sea.

"They pick up these balloons and balloon bands and they end up bring them back and feeding them to their chicks."

When balloons fly, seabirds die

The Phillip Island Nature Reserve has joined forces with Zoos Victoria to launch a campaign called When Balloons Fly, Seabirds Die, encouraging people to stop releasing helium balloons.

Zoos Victoria chief executive Jenny Gray said released balloons often ended up in the ocean.

"Every day balloons are released or escape at outdoor events because people don't realise this is creating a very real threat to wildlife," Dr Gray said.

Dr Dann said the problem was growing around Phillip Island.

"We've had at least a dozen fur seals entangled with these balloons strings, or bands, in the last five years that we know of, that we've actually caught and removed the string from," he said.

"We're noticing on Phillip Island that we're getting more and more balloon bands turning up with exploded balloons on the end on the beaches.

"It would probably come as a surprise to many people that whey they celebrate some happy event by releasing balloons, there are consequences further down the line."

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Research finds harmful algae toxins in Alaska marine mammals

DAN JOLING Associated Press Yahoo News 13 Feb 16;

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A review of more than 900 marine mammals hunted, stranded or captured for research along Alaska's coast has found toxins from harmful algae in 13 species, creating concern that the natural poisonous substances could increase as water temperatures warm and sea ice diminishes.

Algal toxins were present in animals sampled from southeast Alaska to the Arctic Ocean. Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies examined feces, stomach content and urine for two toxins.

Algal toxin has led to deaths of sea lions documented since 1998 in central California. They have been found previously in Alaska, at times creating health concerns for people eating clams, but have not been documented to this extent, said Kathi Lefebvre, a research biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"The real concern is that the waters are warming and the sea ice is melting and the light is more available, making it more favorable for these blooms of algae," she said.

Algae are simple organisms, sometimes single-cell, that like other phytoplankton, float in the ocean at the mercy of ocean currents.

Harmful algae species produce toxins. When conditions are right, with optimal temperature and nutrients, harmful algae can grow rapidly divide and create dense blooms. They're eaten by zooplankton or filter feeders such as clams, shellfish or tiny fin fish, allowing the toxin to move higher in the food web.

Lefebvre is program leader for NOAA's West Coast Wildlife Algal-toxin Research and Response Network in Seattle, which looked at samples from 905 animals collected in Alaska wildlife over nine years. The sampling was "opportunistic," meaning the same species of animal was not sampled regularly. That means the study could not detect whether toxins had increased in particular species over a decade, Lefebvre said.

Researchers looked for domoic acid and saxitoxin.

Domoic acid has killed California sea lions. A study last year indicated affected animals that survive can suffer brain damage that leads to significant deficits in spatial memory, which could affect their ability to forage, migrate or avoid ship strikes, Lefebvre said. Domoic acid was found in all 13 Alaska species reviewed and was found in 68 percent of bowhead whales samples and 67 percent of harbor seals.

Saxitoxin, which causes paralytic seafood poisoning in clams, was found in 10 of the 13 species. It was detected in 50 percent of the humpback whale samples and 32 percent of bowhead whale samples.

Researchers could not conclude whether algal toxins were related to 2015 Alaska marine mammal die-offs, such as fin whales and sea otters.

"We don't have the smoking gun," Lefebvre said. "We don't have the right kinds of samples to look at." Instead, the research emphasizes the importance and potential impacts of algal toxins in historically cold Alaska waters, she said.

Researchers also don't know whether the toxin concentrations found were high enough to cause health impacts for the marine mammals sampled. They did conclude, however, that the levels accumulating in commonly eaten parts of the animals were not at a level of a concern for human safety.

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Extreme Arctic sea ice melt forces thousands of walruses ashore in Alaska

Survival of walruses threatened as they wash ashore on a remote barrier island just before Obama is due to visit region to draw attention to climate change
Suzanne Goldenberg The Guardian 27 Aug 15;

The extreme loss of Arctic sea ice due to climate change is forcing thousands of walruses to crowd ashore on a remote barrier island off Alaska, and threatening their survival.

Barack Obama will be the first US president to visit the Alaskan Arctic on 31 August on a three-day tour to draw attention to the drastic consequences of climate change for the Arctic, such as warming winters and the rapid retreat of sea ice.

The first reported sighting of animals forced to come ashore in the Chukchi Sea was by a photographer on 23 August, and confirmed by villagers in the remote hamlet of Point Lay late on Thursday, the US Fish and Wildlife Service said.

Such landings, forced by the absence of sea ice on which to rest and feed, put the animals at risk of stampede in the limited space of the barrier island.

The animals are easily spooked by aircraft or onlookers, government scientists warned. Trampling deaths are one of the biggest natural risks.

Sea ice cover in the winter months fell to a new low this year because of climate change and abnormal weather patterns.

Some scientists believe the Arctic could be entirely ice-free in the summer months by the 2030s – with profound effects for local indigenous communities that rely on the ice, as well as wildlife that depend on extreme conditions.

Since 2000, the forced migration of walruses and their young to barrier islands such as Point Lay – known as a “haul out” – has become an increasingly regular occurrence, according to US government scientists.

“Many walruses seem to prefer the barrier islands just north of the native village of Point Lay to haul out,” Jim MacCracken, a supervisory wildlife biologist with the fish and wildlife service, said.

Last year, as many as 40,000 animals, mainly females and their young, were forced ashore. It was the biggest known haul-out of its kind in the US Arctic, according to government scientists. The Federal Aviation Authority re-routed flights and bush pilots were told to keep their distance to avoid a stampede.

Agency scientists said about 60 young walruses were killed because of crowding and stampedes.

“Walruses often flee haulouts in response to the sight, sound, or odor of humans or machines. Walruses are particularly sensitive to changes in engine noise and are more likely to stampede off beaches when planes turn or fly low overhead,” Andrea Medeiros, a spokeswoman for the fish and wildlife service, said in an email.

The villagers have been dreading the prospect of a repeat record haul-out – and earlier this month appealed to outsiders to keep away from the area.

“We do not believe that these sorts of visits are in the best interest of the walruses and they do not align with the haul out protection role we have developed and measures we set in place to prevent disturbances,” Leo Ferreira III, the Point Lay tribal president said in a statement distributed by US government agencies.

Gary Braasch, an environmental photographer, said he first spotted the walruses coming ashore on the southern end of the barrier island, about two miles from the hamlet of Point Lay, on the evening of 23 August.

Braasch has spent about a decade photographing evidence of climate change in Alaska, and had been tracking the movement of tagged walruses through the US Geological Survey mapping projects.

“What they looked like by eye was three brown smudges along the beach. They were not visible as individual animals,” he said. But he said the blown-up images revealed large numbers of animals. “Certainly they were in the low thousands at that point.”

Fish and Wildlife Service officials accused Braasch of violating flight safeguards and putting the animals at risk – a charge he rejected. “Several of our biologists looked at the images and noted that it appeared that many animals were on shore and appeared to be agitated and fleeing the area,” Medeiros said. “Harassing walrus is against the law. Operating an aircraft in a manner which results in harassing or disturbing walruses is prohibited by the Marine Mammal Protection Act.”

Braasch said the pilot did not overfly the barrier island, and intentionally flew several hundred feet beyond the Fish and Wildlife flight guidelines to avoid the risk of stampede. He said he took his photograph from more than a mile away. “We were not even close to the limits they set.”

He confirmed the government agency had been in contact about flight concerns.

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Record California sea lion strandings reach 2,250 so far this year

Steve Gorman PlanetArk 7 Apr 15;

A record 2,250 sea lions, mostly pups, have washed up starving and stranded on Southern California beaches so far this year, a worsening phenomenon blamed on warming seas in the region that have disrupted the marine mammals' food supply.

The latest tally, reported on Monday by the National Marine Fisheries Service, is 20 times the level of strandings averaged for the same three-month period over the past decade and twice the number documented in 2013, the previous worst winter season recorded for Southern California sea lions.

Scientists believe the animals are suffering from a scarcity of natural prey that has forced nursing mothers to venture farther out to sea for food, leaving their young behind to fend for themselves for longer periods of time.

The shift in the food chain around the marine mammals' principal rookeries off Southern California is believed to be triggered by warming waters linked to unusually weak winds along the West Coast.

Stronger winds normally help pull nutrient-rich cooler water from the depths of the Pacific closer to the surface, and with it larger supplies of sardines, smelt, squid and other prey for the sea lions, said Michael Milstein, a spokesman for the Marine Fisheries Service.

Experts theorize this winter's mild El Nino effect, which alters ocean currents and temperatures, may be compounding the food shortage for Southern California sea lions.

The same factors appear to driving adult male sea lions by the thousands into the Pacific Northwest, where they have been congregating on docks and jetties to gorge on an unusual abundance of prey in places like the mouth of the Columbia River, Milstein said.

Meanwhile, the surge in Southern California strandings has inundated marine mammal rescue centers from Santa Barbara to San Diego. Rescue teams work to save, rehabilitate and ultimately return the animals to the wild.

The weaker winds and rising ocean temperatures off Southern California have been occurring since 2013, when an earlier surge in strandings prompted the agency to declare an "unusual mortality event."

Milstein said scientists studying the phenomenon consider the elevated stranding numbers during the past three years to be one continuous trend, even though the tally so far this year far exceeds anything previously documented.

The 2,250 strandings encompass only sea lions found alive and brought into rescue centers; they do not include an as-yet unknown number of animals that have died, Milstein said.

But with a total California sea lion population estimated to be 300,000 animals, of which roughly 60,000 are juveniles, "the overall mortality this year could be significant."

The fisheries service, an agency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, began closely tracking sea lion strandings off California in 2004, he said. The tally of stranding for March, 1,050, represents the largest number recorded for a single month since then.

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

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Things to Know about California's sea lion crisis

GILLIAN FLACCUS Associated Press Yahoo News 18 Mar 15;

LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) — More than 1,800 starving sea lion pups have washed up on California beaches since Jan. 1 and 750 are being treated in rescue centers across the state, according to updated numbers released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Scientists with the federal agency believe the crisis hasn't reached its peak and sea lions could continue to arrive on beaches sick and starving for at least two more months.

Here are a few things to know about the sea lion crisis unfolding in California:

WHY ARE THEY STARVING?

Waters off North America's Pacific Coast are about 2 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average. That could be pushing the fish that sea lions eat — sardines, market squid and anchovies, for example — further north. The majority of sea lions give birth in rookeries on the Channel Islands off the Southern California coast and mothers are leaving their pups alone for up to eight days at a time as they are forced to travel further in search of food. The pups aren't eating as much or as frequently and they are weaning themselves early out of desperation and striking out on their own even though they are underweight and can't hunt properly.

WHY IS THE WATER SO WARM?

Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say an El Nino weather pattern is to blame. North winds, which stir up the coastal waters in the spring and bring colder, nutrient-rich swells to the surface, are just now starting to materialize off California and might bring some relief over time. The warming off California is likely the result of regional weather patterns rather than a direct effect of global warming, said Nate Mantua, a NOAA research scientist based in Santa Cruz, California.

HAS THIS HAPPENED BEFORE?

Yes. In 1998, a strong El Nino weather pattern led to significant warming in Pacific coastal waters and 2,500 sea lion pups were found washed up on California beaches. A large number also washed ashore in 2013. Current numbers are on track to surpass the 1998 record but have not done so yet, said Justin Viezbicke, coordinator for NOAA's California Stranding Network.

WILL THIS HURT THE SEA LION POPULATION?

It's unclear. This year's crisis probably won't have any immediate effect but several years of such big losses could reduce the sea lion population in the future. Currently, there are about 300,000 sea lions and the numbers of dead pups represents less than 1 percent of the total population, said Viezbicke. The number of pups born each year in the past few years is also much greater than during previous episodes of coastal warming in the 1990s.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE SEA LIONS THAT ARE RESCUED?

Many of the sea lion pups are beyond help by the time they are reported to authorities. Some die at the rescue centers and others are euthanized. Those that do survive are tube-fed until they regain their strength and then released back into the wild. NOAA doesn't have a tally of how many have been successfully treated and released. The ones being released are tagged with a number but placing satellite trackers on all of them is too costly so scientists aren't sure how many are making it.

HOW CAN HUMANS HELP?

People who live in California can volunteer at a rescue center. Most centers are now running at full capacity and aren't able to take many new sea lion pups in but they still need extra hands. Another alternative is to donate money. A map showing the marine rescue centers helping sea lions, along with contact information, can be found here: http://www.westcoast.fisheries.noaa.gov/publications/protected_species/marine_mammals/2013_ca_live_mmstranding_contact.pdf

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Southern California coast sees deluge of sick sea lion pups

Dana Feldman PlanetArk 15 Mar 13;

Sick and malnourished sea lion pups are stranding themselves on Southern California beaches in some of the largest numbers seen in over a decade, perplexing scientists and leading one care facility to declare itself near capacity.

Officials at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in Laguna Beach, California, have said they are in emergency mode.

The last time they saw such an onslaught of the mammal pups this early in the year was 1998, when an "El Nino" weather pattern warmed the waters off the California coast.

Fish migrated away from shore, which forced adult sea lions to swim farther to chase them and made it harder for mother sea lions to care for their young.

Animal rescuers believe adult sea lions are again foraging deeper into the ocean this year, but the reasons are unclear. What has been evident is the poor health of the many sea lion pups stranding themselves on beaches.

"As of a month ago, there were high numbers but in a less critical state - now we have high numbers in a critical state," Keith Matassa, executive director of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, told Reuters.

The Pacific Marine Mammal Center, located about 45 miles south of Los Angeles, took in 12 sea lion pups on Saturday, which was the largest number of admissions in a single day in the center's 42-year history.

Officials at the facility, the only one of its kind in Orange County, said they were caring for over 90 sea lions on Wednesday. "We're not at max capacity but we're reaching a critical state," Matassa said.

Pacific Marine Mammal Center's busy season is normally from April through August, which coincides with when most of the mammals are born. Last year in March, the facility was caring for only 10 sea lions, which was an average number.

Marine Mammal Care Center at Fort MacArthur in Los Angeles also has seen many sea lion pups in need of care and is housing over 100 of the mammals, said director David Bard.

Christine Sephenson, 24, and her friend Raeann Rodriguez, 30, were walking along the sand in Laguna Beach on Wednesday when they almost tripped over a sick pup and called the center to have it picked up.

"He had wounds all over and was coughing and could barely open his eyes," Stephenson said. "You could see his ribs, he was crying."

Back at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, several emaciated pups, with visible rib cages, lay in bundles in temperature-controlled rooms as veterinarians cared for them.

When the pups first arrive, they are put on a formula that includes dehydration remedy Pedialyte and sweetener Karo syrup. As the mammals get more healthy, fish is blended into their diet. It takes two to four months for the pups to get well.

"We're a hospital so not all patients will make it through," Matassa said.

A necropsy is performed on any animal that does not survive, as part of the effort to understand what is ailing the pups this year. "Even in death they can give us a lot of answers as to what's going on," Matassa said.

Spike in Sick Sea Lions Along Calif. Coast Puzzles Scientists
Megan Gannon LiveScience.com Yahoo News 4 Apr 13;

Sickly, emaciated sea lion pups have been turning up on California's coastline in unusually high numbers since January — with live strandings nearly three times higher than the historical average.

Officials say the strandings have intensified this month, and they're starting to investigate the possible causes, while marine mammal rehabilitation centers in the area have been overwhelmed with starving, hypothermic and dehydrated pups.

The problem is most pronounced in Los Angeles County, where 395 sea lion strandings have been reported this year as of March 24, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). During the same period in 2012, just 36 strandings were reported.

Stranding rates are also high in Orange County, where 189 sickly sea lions have come ashore, compared with 20 last year. And in San Diego County, strandings stood at 214, compared with 32 last year.

Last week, NOAA declared an "unusual mortality event," from January to the present and has launched an investigation, which will involve testing blood and tissue samples from both live and dead sea lion pups for bacterial, viral and other infectious agents as well as radioactive traces. [Photos: World's Cutest Baby Wild Animals]

Officials from the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro, Calif., told the Los Angeles Times that they are treating about 100 animals and have seen as many cases since January that they would normally see in a year.

The goal is to get these sea lions healthy and rehabilitated so that they can be safely released back into the wild. But sometimes the animals strand themselves again and again and then go on to become research subjects.

Take Ronan, for example, a California sea lion that stranded three times before she was taken in to the Pinniped Cognition and Sensory Systems Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She made headlines this week when researchers published the results of a study that showed the sea lion had learned how to headbang to songs like the Backstreet Boys' "Everybody." Ronan might be the first non-human mammal to prove she can dance.

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Seal cull will not revive Canada's cod stocks, say scientists

Open letter from marine scientists at Dalhousie University challenges claim that cull is needed to help fish stocks
Stephen Leahy guardian.co.uk 15 Nov 12;

Canada's multimillion dollar proposal to cull grey seals will not bring back the ravaged stocks of Atlantic cod it is intended to help, scientists have said.

In October, the Canadian Senate approved a controversial plan to kill 70,000 grey seals in the Gulf of St Lawrence under a bounty system next year, ostensibly to revive the cod stocks that the seals were eating.

But a group of marine scientists at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, have said in a recent open letter: "There is no credible scientific evidence to suggest a cull of grey seals in Atlantic Canada would help depleted fish stocks recover.

"Seals are being used as a scapegoat, just like whales were once blamed for fishery declines," said Hal Whitehead, marine biologist at Dalhousie, told the Guardian. He called the proposed cull an abuse of the science. "I don't like the idea of slaughtering all these animals for no reason."

Canada's Atlantic cod stocks, once estimated at 1.5-2.5 billion fish of reproductive age, collapsed in the early 1990s from overfishing. Despite a nearly total ban on cod fishing for the past 20 years, stocks have not recovered.

That's not the case for grey seals. Similarly depleted by hunting, numbers stood at just a few thousand in the 1970s. Following the collapse of markets for seal fur, mainly due to bans by European countries, their numbers increased dramatically. Grey seals are now estimated at 300,000 to 400,000.

Canada's standing Senate committee on fisheries and oceans report declared last month that since there are more seals, and seals eat fish, they are "an important cause" in the lack of recovery of Atlantic cod, as well other groundfish like American plaice, winter skate and white hake.

The committee, after looking at reports by fishermen and the Department Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) studies estimating that cod represents 1-7% of seal diets, said it was "convinced" that predation by seals was a major reason cod stocks had not recovered.

The cull request was currently being reviewed, said a DFO spokeswoman. That seals are a factor in the lack of cod and groundfish recovery was "a logical conclusion given that an individual grey seals eat between 1 and 2 tonnes of fish every year", she told the Guardian.

But Sara Iverson, a researcher in physiological ecology at Dalhousie University, said cod madke up a very small part of the grey seal's diet. Iverson, who has studied their diets for 17 years, said they prefer fatty fish, while cod are lean with only 1% body fat.

There are all kinds of reasons why the cod have not bounced back, Whitehead said, adding that there has never been a complete ban with some local fisheries continuing, and there is a problem of bycatch.

However he said the leading theory amongst scientists was a species shift. When an abundant species like the cod suddenly declines, other species step into their ecological niche. "Northern shrimp have taken over and are now the big fishery in the region," he said.

John Bennett, executive director of Sierra Club Canada, described the bounty system of payment to seal hunters a "nothing more than a subsidy for a dead industry

"The money could be put to better use by buying out sealing licences and creating sustainable employment for the sealers."

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Peru probes mystery pelican deaths

AFP Yahoo News 1 May 12;

A team of ornithologists were investigating the mysterious death of nearly 600 sea birds found on the beaches of northern Peru, government officials said.

The investigation follows a probe into the deaths of more than 850 dolphins that have washed ashore since January along the same 170-kilometer (100-mile) stretch of coastline in the northern departments of Piura and Lambayeque.

Peru's Oceanic Institute (IMARPE) said that, as of Sunday, they had found 538 dead pelicans and 54 dead Peruvian Boobies. They also found the carcasses of five sea lions that washed ashore and the decomposed remains of a turtle.

The Ministry of Production, in charge of fisheries, said in a statement that early results suggest that the birds died on the beach, and did not wash ashore dead.

Deputy Environment Minister Gabriel Quijandria said on April 19 that the dolphins were likely killed by a highly infectious virus known as morbillivirus.

Experts however are awaiting test results to know whether they can rule out environmental pollution or other factors.

"It's not the first time this has happened. There have been other instances in Peru, Mexico and the United States," Quijandria added.

Ninety-five percent of the deaths affected bottle-nosed dolphins, officials said.

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Polar Bears Have Symptoms Of Mystery Disease: U.S. Agency

Yereth Rosen PlanetArk 10 Apr 12;

Symptoms of a mysterious disease that has killed scores of seals off Alaska and infected walruses are now showing up in polar bears, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said on Friday.

Nine polar bears from the Beaufort Sea region near Barrow were found with patchy hair loss and oozing sores on their skin, similar to conditions found in diseased seals and walruses, the agency said in a statement.

Unlike the sickened seals and walruses, the affected polar bears seem otherwise healthy, said Tony DeGange, chief of the biology office for the USGS's Alaska Science Center. There had been no deaths among polar bears, he said.

The nine affected bears were among the 33 that biologists have captured and sampled while doing routine studies on the Arctic coastline, DeGange said.

Patchy hair loss has been seen before in polar bears, but the high prevalence in those spotted by the researchers and the simultaneous problems in seal and walrus populations elevate the concern, he said.

The USGS is coordinating with agencies studying the other animals to investigate whether there is a link, he said.

"There's a lot we don't know yet, whether we're dealing with something that's different or something that's the same," he said.

The disease outbreak was first noticed last summer. About 60 seals were found dead and another 75 diseased, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Most of the affected seals are ringed seals, but diseased ribbon, bearded and spotted seals were also found.

Several walruses in northwestern Alaska were found with the disease, and some of those died as well, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The diseased seals and walruses, many of them juveniles, had labored breathing and lethargy as well as the bleeding sores, according to the experts. The agencies launched an investigation into the cause of the disease, which has also turned up in bordering areas of Canada and Russia.

Preliminary studies showed that radiation poisoning is not the cause, temporarily ruling out a theory that the animals were sickened by contamination from the tsunami-wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.

Spread of the disease among seals continues. A sickened and nearly bald ribbon seal pup was found about a month ago near Yakutat on the Gulf of Alaska coastline, according to the agency. The animal was so sick it had to be euthanized.

All of the afflicted species are dependent on Arctic sea ice and considered vulnerable to seasonal ice loss.

Polar bears are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and listings are being considered for the Pacific walrus and for the ringed, bearded and ribbon seals.

(Editing by Greg McCune; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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Video Reveals Shocking Footage of Sea Lions Strangled by Debris

Wynne Parry LiveScience.com Yahoo News 14 Feb 12;

The images aren't pretty: Sea lions with shiny fishing lures protruding from their mouths or with their necks tightly bound, even deeply cut, by packing bands once used to secure boxes. Seals with necks tightly encircled by pieces of fishing net.

The scientists who study these animals know that becoming entangled with items such as these can injure or even kill the unlucky animals.

A video, put together by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, documents the effects of loops, fishing gear and other debris, including a tire and a wind sock — which drowned a sea lion by pinning her flippers to her body.

The researchers posted the video on YouTube recently to let people know about the problem.

The problems

A study of eastern Steller sea lions, which are threatened by extinction, along the southeastern coast of Alaska and northern British Columbia found that plastic packing bands and rubber bands were the most common items to show up around the animal's necks, while metal flasher lures used for salmon fishing were the most frequently ingested fishing gear.

Between 2000 and 2007, the study researchers spotted 386 animals that had picked up some sort of debris.

"We are certainly underestimating the number of animals entangled. We go out every summer here in southeastern Alaska and we try to visit every haul out (where animals come to shore) and rookery (where they breed) at least once," said study researcher Lauri Jemison, a wildlife biologist in the Steller Sea Lion program of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Their numbers are likely conservative, as they could've missed counting an entangled sea lion that didn't come to shore, wasn't visible in the crowd of sea lions or that hauled out elsewhere, Jemison said.

A widespread problem

Many marine species, including marine mammals, sea birds and turtles, face similar problems, Jemison and colleagues write in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin in 2009.

In Alaskan waters, Steller sea lions and the smaller, northern fur seals become entangled more frequently than other pinnipeds (fin-footed mammals).

Fur seals, too, somehow manage to pick up bands around their necks, like the sea lions do. But unlike Steller sea lions, they don't appear to be swallowing much fishing gear, according to Michael Williams, the Pribilof Island program manager for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

During intensive surveys on the Pribilof Islands, in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, researchers could spot about 100 entangled fur seals from a population of about 500,000 that use the islands as a home base during the summer and fall, according to Williams. But, as with the sea lions, it's quite likely more animals are affected.

Getting caught

Somehow, fur seals, and probably sea lions as well, swimming out in the great blue ocean are finding their way through little loops, according to Williams.

"The probability of it seems so remote given how big the ocean is, yet it still happens. I think it has to do with convergence zones." Ocean debris collects in these zones where currents converge forming islands of debris, which attract fish seeking shelter, and in turn, their predators, including seals, Williams speculates. [Album: Lost Predators Leave Broken Food Chains]

While adults may pick the loops up during foraging, young pups may become entangled while playing. As young seals — which appear more prone to become entangled — grow, the restriction around their necks tightens, potentially strangling them. This is especially true of males, which develop larger, thicker necks, and grow larger overall than females, according to Jemison.

Preventing entanglements

There are a number of ways to address the problem. The "Lose the Loop" slogan encourages people to simply cut any loop that could be thrown into the trash or modify gear so it doesn't contain loops. However, the cut bands can still create problems if they are ingested by animals, note the authors of the Marine Pollution Bulletin.

Other solutions include reducing litter from boats and on land, and using materials that don't need loops, according to experts.

Educating the fishing industry is another key. Sea lions often pick up fishing lures while chasing an easy meal, according to Jemison, who said that both commercial and casual fishermen lose salmon and their lures, lines and hooks to hungry sea lions.

Hooks can perforate a sea lion's esophagus or stomach, killing the animal. Sometimes a dangling lure is a sign of a swallowed hook, and sometimes there is no external sign the animal has consumed fishing gear. (By itself, a lure is not a death sentence, as some animals lose the shiny flashing lures and continue with their lives.)

The department is currently seeking funding to work with the fishing industry to come up with solutions, such as modified gear or deterrents to keep the sea lions away from fishing boats, she said.

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Dolphin, seal deaths plague New England

Jay Lindsay Associated Press MSNBC 28 Jan 12;

BOSTON — Whether they got lost, sick or swam astray chasing food, 77 dolphins that beached on Cape Cod in recent weeks have died, the second time in three months New England has seen a mass of marine mammal deaths.

Now, scientists are trying to figure out why.

They're also researching whether there's any connection to a die-off this fall of 162 harbor seals, whose carcasses were found between northern Massachusetts and Maine.

Scientists later determined the seal deaths were linked to an influenza virus similar to one found in birds but never before seen in seals. In a letter earlier this month, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and Rep. William Keating asked Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to investigate "any common cause" between the dolphin and seal deaths.

"That is a big question," said Mendy Garron, regional marine mammal stranding coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service, part of NOAA. The initial indications are that there is no link, she said, but it's too early for a definitive answer. Necropsies are under way to determine the causes of death, and that can take a few weeks.

The strandings stretch along 25-mile stretch of Cape Cod from Wellfleet, approaching the tip of the cape, south around the curve of Cape Cod Bay to Dennis.

The first was reported in Wellfleet on Jan. 12. Five more reports followed the next day. On Jan. 14, 30 more animals got stuck on Wellfeet and reports remained steady, then trailed off in the past week.

As of Saturday, 63 of the dolphins have been found dead and 11 died later, included at least one that was euthanized. Another 24 were released into the ocean, though three of those have died, said A.J. Cady of the International Fund for Animal Welfare. The group is leading the rescue efforts.
Image: Volunteer monitors breathing of stranded dolphin
Julia Cumes / AP
Patty Walsh, a volunteer with International Fund for Animal Welfare, monitors the breathing of a stranded common dolphin.

The total strandings are unprecedented, and two and half times the annual average of 37 common dolphin strandings over the past 12 years, Cady said.

Wellfleet harbormaster Michael Flanagan said he's seen several pods of more than 100 animals in his 14 years on the job. "But you never really see that many strandings," he said.

The affected dolphins appear to be linked by little besides their species. Their conditions range from healthy to sick, and they aren't all a particular age or sex.

"Nobody really knows for sure yet whether it's one particular thing," Cady said.

There are several possibilities. For instance, the dolphins are social animals, and some could be following a sick fellow animal to shore, researchers theorize. Changes in water temperature are a possible factor leading them into the bay, but it's unclear how.

Some dolphins could be chasing prey into Cape Cod Bay, and essentially getting lost in the geographic features of Cape Cod's inner coastline. For instance, dolphins headed north along the inner Cape's coastline looking for open ocean can get trapped in Wellfleet, which juts out like a tiny hook. Then, the area's quickly receding tides can beach them in local marshes.

Rescuers try to guide lost animals to open water, either by keeping a boat between them and the coastline, or repelling them from land with unpleasant sounds, Cady said.

Once stranded, a dolphin's own weight can damage its organs. Hypothermia and sunburn are also a danger, and Flanagan said seagulls looking for a meal turn savage and pick at the mammal's eyes and organs.

After rescuers reach a dolphin, often through major muck, they quickly assess whether it's strong enough to be moved. If so, workers slip a stretcher underneath and carry the 8-foot-long, 300-pound animals into rescue trailers for a trip to the Cape's outer coastline for release. On the way, scientists perform tests to better assess the health of the animals.

Just a few years ago, it was commonly believed to be too risky to move the stranded animals, Cady said. But, he said, tracking devices placed on some rescued dolphins have shown them moving far from where they were released.

The effort and expense is considerable — the dolphin strandings have cost between $50,000 and $60,000, Cady said. But it's well worth the cost on several levels, he added. Their health tells us about the health of the ocean, which affects everyone, Cady said. It's also simply the humane things to do, he said.

People don't have to be prodded to assist dolphins. Flanagan said he gets "a million" volunteers every time an animal is stranded.

"People can relate to these mammals, because they go and see them at Sea World. ... They can see how intelligent they are," he said. "They're such gentle animals, you can't help but feel sorry for them when they're stranded and they're out of their element and there's nothing you can really do for them."

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'Dramatic' loss of harp seals amid warming: study

AFP Yahoo News 5 Jan 12;

Harp seal pups off the coast of eastern Canada are dying at alarming rates due to a loss of winter ice cover, according to US scientists who questioned on Wednesday if the population will be able to recover.

The study by researchers at Duke University shows that seasonal ice cover in the harp seal breeding regions of the North Atlantic Ocean has declined about six percent per decade since 1979, when satellite data began.

The result has been entire generations of newly born seal pups dying due to their disappearing habitat, said the study published in the open access science journal PLoS ONE.

"The kind of mortality we're seeing in eastern Canada is dramatic," said co-author David Johnston, a research scientist at the Duke University Marine Lab.

"Entire year-classes may be disappearing from the population in low ice years -- essentially all of the pups die," he said. "It calls into question the resilience of the population."

For recent data, researchers looked at satellite images of winter ice from 1992 to 2010 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, a prime breeding region off the east coast of Canada, and compared them to yearly reports of dead seal pup strandings in the region.

They also compared stranding rates to records of a climate phenomenon known as the North Atlantic Oscillation, which controls the intensity and track of westerly winds and storms and exerts a major influence on sea ice formation.

They found that years of weaker NAO and lighter ice cover showed higher death rates among seal pups.

While harp seals have adapted to the earlier spring melts in recent years by developing shorter 12-day nursing periods, it remains unclear if their population can sustain itself against sea ices losses over time.

"As a species, they're well suited to deal with natural short-term shifts in climate, but our research suggests they may not be well adapted to absorb the effects of short-term variability combined with longer-term climate change and other human influences such as hunting and by-catch," Johnston said.

The team also looked back at data from 1950 to 1972 which showed that NAO weather changes were tied to big declines in the seal population, followed by period of recovery from 1973 to 2000.

"But there's a caveat: regardless of NAO conditions, our models show that sea ice cover in all harp seal breeding regions in the North Atlantic have been declining by as much as six percent a decade over the study period," added Johnston.

"The losses in bad years outweigh the gains in good years."

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Preserving 4 Percent of the Ocean Could Protect Most Marine Mammal Species, Study Finds

ScienceDaily 26 Aug 11;

Preserving just 4 percent of the ocean could protect crucial habitat for the vast majority of marine mammal species, from sea otters to blue whales, according to researchers at Stanford University and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Their findings were published in the Aug. 16 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Of the 129 species of marine mammals on Earth, including seals, dolphins and polar bears, approximately one-quarter are facing extinction, the study said.

"It's important to protect marine mammals if you want to keep the ocean's ecosystems functional," said study co-author Paul Ehrlich, professor of biology and senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford. "Many of them are top predators and have impacts all the way through the ecosystem. And they're also beautiful and interesting."

Mapping marine mammals

To pinpoint areas of the ocean where conservation could protect the maximum number of species and the ones most vulnerable to extinction, the researchers overlaid maps of where each marine mammal species is found. Their composite map revealed locations with the highest "species richness" -- the highest number of different species.

"This is the first time that the global distribution of marine mammal richness has been compiled and presented as a map," said co-authors Sandra Pompa and Gerardo Ceballos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "The most surprising and interesting result was that all of the species can be represented in only 20 critical conservation locations that cover at least 10 percent of the species' geographic range."

The researchers identified the 20 conservation sites based on three main criteria: how many species were present, how severe the risk of extinction was for each species and whether any of the species were unique to the area. The scientists also considered habitats of special importance to marine mammals, such as breeding grounds and migration routes.

Nine key sites

It turned out that preserving just nine of the 20 conservation sites would protect habitat for 84 percent of all marine mammal species on Earth, the scientists found. That's because those nine locations have very high species richness, providing habitat for 108 marine mammal species in all.

These nine sites, which make up only 4 percent of the world's ocean, are located off the coasts of Baja California in Mexico, eastern Canada, Peru, Argentina, northwestern Africa, South Africa, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, the study reported.

The researchers also looked at how pollution, local climate disruption and commercial shipping overlapped with species richness in or near the nine key sites. "At least 70 percent of the richness areas coincide with regions highly impacted by humans," said Pompa and Ceballos. "This is powerful information that obliges us to enhance marine conservation."

Factoring in other impacts, such as overfishing and global climate change, would likely reveal even more negative effects on the nine conservation sites, the authors said.

"The next 2 billion people we're going to add to the planet are going to do much more damage to the ocean than the previous 2 billion did," said Ehrlich, president of the Stanford Center for Conservation Biology. "Humans reach for the low-hanging fruit first, so to speak, but for the ocean that's gone now."

Unique creatures

While nine of the conservation sites harbor numerous marine mammal species, the remaining 11 sites boast species found nowhere else. Preserving these areas is important, because species that live exclusively in one place may be at especially high risk for extinction, the authors said. For example, the critically endangered vaquita, or gulf porpoise, lives only in the upper northern Gulf of California, and only a few hundred individuals remain, the researchers noted.

"We need to conserve what's left of the biota of the planet, both on land and in the sea," said Ehrlich. "We need to know where the biodiversity is before we can take many of the necessary steps to conserve it. This is just a start on the mammals of the sea."

The study was supported by grants from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, EcoCiencia Sociedad Civil, Mexico's National Council for Science and Technology and the Cetacean Society International.

Journal Reference:

S. Pompa, P. R. Ehrlich, G. Ceballos. Global distribution and conservation of marine mammals. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011; 108 (33): 13600 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1101525108

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Melting Arctic sea ice drives walruses onto land

Deborah Zabarenko Reuters 19 Aug 11;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fast-melting Arctic sea ice appears to be pushing walruses to haul themselves out onto land, and many are moving around the area where oil leases have been sold, the U.S. Geological Survey reports.

Walruses are accomplished divers and frequently plunge hundreds of feet (meters) to the bottom of the continental shelf to feed. But they use sea ice as platforms to give birth, nurse their young and elude predators, and when sea ice is scarce or non-existent, as it has been this summer, they come up on land.

Last September, the loss of sea ice caused an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 walruses to venture onto land, and as sea ice melts reached a record last month, U.S. government scientists are working with Alaskan villagers to put radio transmitters on some of the hauled-out walruses to track their movements around the Chukchi Sea.

"The ice is very widely dispersed and there is little of it left over the continental shelf," researcher Chad Jay of the U.S. Geological Survey said in a statement on Wednesday. "Based on our tracking data, the walruses appear to be spreading out and spending quite a bit of time looking for sea ice."

The loss of sea ice puts Pacific walruses at risk, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, but other, higher-priority species will get attention first. In February, the wildlife service listed Pacific walruses as candidates for protection, though not protection itself.

Walruses are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which means these animals cannot be harvested, imported, exported or be part of interstate commerce.

Polar bears, which also use sea ice in the Chukchi Sea as platforms for hunting, have been designated as threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act because of declining sea ice in the Arctic.

Compared to last year's massive haul-out, there are few walruses on land, and there is no solid count, Jay said.

"There is a lot less ice than there used to be on the continental shelf this time of year," he said. "So we might be headed into a new normal."

Transmissions from the radio-tagged walruses offer a good picture of where these creatures are in the Chukchi Sea in a U.S. Geological Survey graphic updated approximately weekly.

SHRINKING ARCTIC SEA ICE

Available online at http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/walrus/2011animation_Norseman.html , the graphic shows where the walruses were when they were first tagged (shown as red Xs) and how they moved around the water (shown as yellow dots).

The graphic also shows changes in sea ice cover in the far north, indicating nearly ice-free conditions in areas where the walruses are moving. Many are within the boundaries of an oil lease sale area that stretches along the northwestern Alaska coast and far into the Chukchi Sea.

Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips and Statoil hold leases in the Chukchi Sea, though no drilling has started.

Last month saw Arctic sea ice drop to its lowest extent -- meaning that it covered the smallest area -- for any July since satellite records began in 1979, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. Typically, Arctic sea ice hits its lowest extent for the year in September.

This record-low ice extent for July is lower than July ice extent in 2007, when ice extent shrank in September to its smallest area in the satellite record.

(Editing by Sandra Maler)

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Melting Sea Ice Leads to Walrus Stampedes, Scientists Warn

Wynne Parry LiveScience.com Yahoo News 16 Aug 11;

Melting sea ice and the earlier-than-normal movement of walruses has conservationists worried this year might bring another mass migration of the massive animals to shore.

While walruses have traditionally come onto land at times, researchers have seen them coming ashore in greater numbers, in new places, and at times not seen before, said Geoff York, senior program officer for Arctic species with the World Wildlife Fund Global Arctic Program.

Walruses feed on mollusks, clams and other animals they retrieve by diving to the seafloor. Normally, the walruses, particularly females with calves, rest on the drifting sea ice between food dives during the summer. [See walrus haul-out]

However, as the ice recedes, it disappears over the relatively shallower waters where the walruses can feed. The remaining ice remains only over water that is so deep the walruses cannot dive down to the bottom and feed. When this happens, the animals retreat onto land near shallower water.

In recent years, these migrations have happened on an unprecedented scale, with walruses congregating in groups of more than 40,000 animals, according to York.

This can strain the local ecosystem as the animals feed in a concentrated location, and the cramped quarters can lead to stampedes that kill many, generally calves, leaving behind carcasses that can attract hungry polar bears, York said.

In 2009, 131 dead walruses were found near Icy Cape, Alaska, and in 2007, 500 dead individuals were found at a "mega haul-out" site near a Russian village. These mass migrations were first reported in 2006 in Russia, he said.

The extent of Arctic sea ice has been retreating for roughly 30 years, reaching a record low in 2007. This year, sea-ice extent is quite low, and may fall below even that recorded in September 2007, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Researchers from the United States Geological Survey have tagged 40 walruses in the southern Chukchi Sea this summer and are tracking their movements. Some have already reached the Alaskan shore from the remote sea ice.

"This year they are leaving the ice up to three weeks earlier than they have in previous years," York told LiveScience.

Over the last couple of years, the walruses have congregated along the Alaskan shore in the vicinity of Icy Cape and Point Lay, and they appear to be doing the same this year, he said.

Walruses aren't the only Arctic mammals threatened by retreating summer sea ice. A recent study found the loss of sea ice was forcing polar bears to swim longer distances, threatening the survival of their cubs.

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Scientists name world's most important marine conservation hotspots

Study reveals 20 sites that are key to ensuring the survival of marine mammals
Alok Jha guardian.co.uk 1 Aug 11;

Scientists have identified the 20 most important regions of the world's oceans and lakes that are key to ensuring the survival of the planet's marine mammals such as seals and porpoises. Their analysis also shows, however, that most of these areas are already under pressure from human impacts such as pollution and shipping.

Marine ecosystems around the world are deteriorating rapidly, according to Sandra Pompa, an ecologist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who led the study, in particular due to habitat degradation, introduction of exotic species and over-exploitation of natural resources. Many species of marine mammals have experienced severe population depletion and several – including the Caribbean monk seal, Atlantic gray whale and the Steller's sea cow – became extinct in the 20th century because of the trade in their fur, blubber and meat.

Pompa led a team of scientists to try and identify which parts of the world's oceans were most crucial for the world's 129 marine mammal populations. Their results, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed nine key global conservation sites that hold 84% of marine mammal species and 11 "irreplaceable" conservation sites, which contain species that are found nowhere else.

For the study, she split the oceans up into a grid of roughly 10,000 square kilometre boxes and examined which species lived in which boxes. The boxes were also assigned values based on whether they contained important feeding grounds or if they were in migration routes.

The main conservation areas, which contain 108 species, are the coasts of Baja California, north-eastern America, Peru, Argentina, north-western Africa, South Africa, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. The 11 smaller conservation zones, which each contained unique species specific to them, included areas around Hawaiian and Galapagos Islands, Lake Baikal in Siberia and major rivers such as the Amazon, Ganges and Yangtze.

Pompa also correlated her map with information on human impacts such as climate disruption, ocean-based pollution and commercial shipping. Areas where there was no impact were scored zero, while areas of high impact were scored three. "Seventy per cent of the most impacted areas were near a key conservation site," said Pompa. "We are competing with [the sea mammals] in terms of shipping or ocean pollution. We want to build industry or touristic attractions and it's their home."

The next species of marine mammal that is likely to become extinct, said the researchers, is the Mexican vaquita, a small porpoise that is endemic to a small geographic area in the most northern part of Baja California. It is thought to number around 250 individuals in the wild.

"The Baikal seal, it's also a very small-numbered population," said Pompa. "Maybe you can think about the vaquita escaping the Gulf into somewhere else but the Baikal seal can't. It's a freshwater endemic mammal species. If any disruption in the lake should happen or a new sickness, they're all packed in one lake."

The researchers said that their maps should be the start of a conversation about where to site new conservation areas to safeguard the world's marine mammals. "Perhaps you are a government or NGO, you can use this information as a tool depending on the aim you have," said Pompa.

"Marine conservation is barely beginning. Marine mammals are great species because they represent healthy ecosystems so, if you begin to lose the species that give you a clue to a healthy ecosystem then you start with the degradation of all of the oceans. A visual projection of where is the richness, where are the endangered species, which corridors we need to protect in order to have all the species present in the world, it's a nice start to know where to focus the effort."

Study shows best places to protect marine mammals
Randolph E. Schmid AP Yahoo News 1 Aug 11;

WASHINGTON (AP) — From sea otters to blue whales, marine mammals are under stress from climate change, ocean acidification, hunting and other threats. Researchers have identified 20 important sites around the world where they say conservation efforts should concentrate.

Marine mammals are widely distributed in the oceans and some freshwater locations, but 11 of the conservation sites are home to creatures found nowhere else, according to the study led by Sandra Pompa of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Researchers dubbed those sites "irreplaceable" and added that the nine others selected include representatives of 84 percent of all marine mammals.

Currently the most endangered marine mammal is the vaquita, a porpoise that lives in the northern section of the Gulf of California, Pompa said.

The 11 sites deemed irreplaceable were the Hawaiian Islands, Galapagos Islands, Amazon River, San Felix and Juan Fernandez Islands off the coast of Chile, Mediterranean Sea, Caspian Sea, Lake Baikal in Russia, Yangtze River, Indus River, Ganges River and the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean.

In addition, the nine sites picked for their species richness were along the coasts of Baja California, much of the eastern coast of the Americas (the Atlantic coast of the U.S. and including coastal areas of Cuba, Hispaniola, Colombia and Venezuela), Peru, Argentina, Northwestern Africa, South Africa, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

The findings in the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will be valuable as a conservation tool for organizations and governments that want to focus on endangered species, Pompa said.

At least three species — the Caribbean monk seal, Atlantic gray whale and Steller's sea cow — became extinct because of hunting for their fur, blubber and meat during the 19th and 20th centuries, the researchers noted. The most recent extinction, declared in 2008, was the baiji, a type of porpoise, from the Yangtze River in China.

http://www.pnas.org

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Lethal Parasite Duo Hits Dolphins, Seals

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Yahoo News 25 May 11;

Two parasites, one carried by cats and the other by opossums, are teaming up in the Pacific Northwest to kill seals, otters and other marine mammals.

One of the parasites, Toxoplasma gondii, can infect people, though it's most often found in cat feces. That bug is a known contaminant along the Pacific coast.

The other parasite, Sarcocystis neurona, was a surprising find in the tissues of dead marine mammals, researchers report May 24 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Even more surprising was the discovery that infection by S. neurona makes toxoplasmosis, the disease caused by T. gondii infection, worse. The result is brain swelling and death.

"The most remarkable finding of our study was the exacerbating role that S. neurona appears to play in causing more severe disease symptoms in those animals that are also infected with T. gondii," study researcher Michael Grigg of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said in a statement.

Grigg and his colleagues performed necropsies on 151 dead marine mammals who they suspected had parasitic encephalitis, the medical term for the brain swelling caused by parasite infection. They also examined 10 dead California sea lions that had been healthy when they were euthanized to protect fish stocks in the Columbia River.

The team found parasites in 147 of the animals, including all of the healthy sea lions. Thirty-two animals had T. gondii infections, while 37 carried S. neurona and 62 carried both parasites.

Among the animals with parasitic encephalitis as a likely cause of death, animals with both parasites were more likely than those with just one to have severe brain tissue swelling. Because the two parasites are similar, Grigg said, researchers suspected that infection with one would trigger an immune response protective against infection with the other. However, that did not seem to be the case, he said. Pregnant or nursing animals were particularly vulnerable to symptoms from the double infections.

T. gondii enters water via infected cat feces, while researchers suspect that S. neurona has been introduced by opossums, which have been moving northward from California. Rain in the area washes infected feces into waterways, where S. neurona can contaminate the food supply of dolphins, sea lions and other mammals.

"Identifying the threads that connect these parasites from wild and domestic land animals to marine mammals helps us to see ways that those threads might be cut, by, for example, managing feral cat and opossum populations, reducing runoff from urban areas near the coast, monitoring water quality and controlling erosion to prevent parasites from entering the marine food chain," Grigg said.

Dual Parasitic Infections Deadly to Marine Mammals
ScienceDaily 24 May 11;

A study of tissue samples from 161 marine mammals that died between 2004 and 2009 in the Pacific Northwest reveals an association between severe illness and co-infection with two kinds of parasites normally found in land animals. One, Sarcocystis neurona, is a newcomer to the northwest coastal region of North America and is not known to infect people, while the other, Toxoplasma gondii, has been established there for some time and caused a large outbreak of disease in people in 1995.

Scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, collaborated with investigators in Washington state and Canada in the research, published online May 24 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Toxoplasmosis, the illness caused by T. gondii infection, is generally not serious in otherwise healthy people, but the parasites can cause severe or fatal disease in people with compromised immune systems and can also damage the fetuses of pregnant women. The parasites are globally distributed and enter water via infected cat feces.

"Chlorination does not kill T. gondii, but filtration eliminates them from the water supply," noted lead researcher Michael Grigg, Ph.D., of the NIAID Laboratory of Parasitic Diseases. Although S. neurona parasites do not infect people, other closely related species of Sarcocystis parasites do. "The public health message here is that people can easily avoid the parasites by filtering or boiling untreated water. Limiting serious disease in marine mammals, however, will require larger conservation efforts to block these land pathogens from flowing into our coastal waters."

During the six-year study period, more than 5,000 dead marine mammals were reported on the coastal beaches of the Pacific Northwest, Dr. Grigg said. Some deaths ascribed to parasitic encephalitis (brain swelling) were assumed to be caused by T. gondii, he noted, because the parasite can infect most mammals and was well established in the region.

To determine the cause of death of the marine animals, Dr. Grigg collaborated with veterinary pathologist Stephen Raverty, D.V.M., Ph.D., of the British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the University of British Columbia, and marine mammal researchers Dyanna Lambourn, of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Jessica Huggins, of Cascadia Research Collective. Specimens were collected and animal autopsies (necropsies) conducted by members of the Northwest and British Columbia Marine Mammal Stranding Network.

Necropsies were performed on 151 marine mammals with suspected cases of parasitic encephalitis. The mammals included several kinds of seals and sea lions, Northern sea otters, a Pacific white-sided dolphin, porpoises and three species of whale. An additional 10 animals, all healthy adult California sea lions that were euthanized in the Columbia River to protect fish stocks, were included in the study as controls. Dr. Raverty's group examined brain tissue from 108 animals positive for either S. neurona or T. gondii. They measured the number of parasites in the tissues and combined that with an assessment of the degree of brain inflammation to gauge whether the infection was likely to be the primary, contributing or incidental cause of death.

At NIAID, Dr. Grigg and his team screened 494 brain, heart, lymph node and other tissue samples with a variety of genetic techniques. "Our techniques are unbiased in that we do not directly search for any particular species of parasite," said Dr. Grigg. "Rather, the screens simply reveal evidence of any parasite in the tissue being studied." The team then applied gene amplifying and gene sequencing methods to identify the species and, often, the subtype or lineage of the microbes.

They found parasites in 147 of the 161 animals studied -- 32 were infected with T. gondii, 37 with S. neurona and 62 with both parasites. The remaining 16 infections were caused by various other parasites, including several that had not been detected before in any kind of animal. Notably, all 10 healthy animals were infected with either one or both of the parasites.

"The presence of T. gondii did not surprise us, but the abundance of S. neurona infections was quite unexpected," said Dr. Grigg. The researchers theorize that S. neurona has been introduced into the Pacific Northwest by opossums, which gradually have been expanding their range northward from California and can shed an infectious form of the parasite in their feces. The ample rainfall in the region provides an easy route for infected feces to enter inland and coastal waterways and then contaminate shellfish and other foods eaten by marine mammals.

"The most remarkable finding of our study was the exacerbating role that S. neurona appears to play in causing more severe disease symptoms in those animals that are also infected with T. gondii," said Dr. Grigg. Among animals for which necropsy had suggested parasitic infection as the primary cause of death, the co-infected animals were more likely to display evidence of severe brain tissue inflammation than those infected by either S. neurona or T. gondii alone. The two parasites are closely related, and other studies had suggested that a mammal's acquired immunity after a first infection with one parasite might protect it from severe illness following infection by the other. However, that was clearly not the case in this study, noted Dr. Grigg. The study results also hinted that animals with lowered immunity, such as pregnant or nursing females or very young animals, were more likely to have worse symptoms when co-infected with both T. gondii and S. neurona.

"Identifying the threads that connect these parasites from wild and domestic land animals to marine mammals helps us to see ways that those threads might be cut," said Dr. Grigg, "by, for example, managing feral cat and opossum populations, reducing run-off from urban areas near the coast, monitoring water quality and controlling erosion to prevent parasites from entering the marine food chain."


Amanda K. Gibson, Stephen Raverty, Dyanna M. Lambourn, Jessica Huggins, Spencer L. Magargal, Michael E. Grigg. Polyparasitism Is Associated with Increased Disease Severity in Toxoplasma gondii-Infected Marine Sentinel Species. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2011; 5 (5): e1142 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0001142

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Monk Seal and Hump-Backed Dolphin Are Threatened by Fishing Activities Off Coast of Mauritania

ScienceDaily 21 Jan 11;

Catalan researchers have studied the marine trophic network in Mauritania, on the north west coast of Africa, which is an extremely heavily exploited fishing area, as well as being home to two of the world's most threatened species of marine mammal -- the monk seal and the Atlantic hump-backed dolphin. The results of the study show that industrial and traditional fishing activities along the coast are putting these mammals and local marine ecosystems at great danger.

The researchers studied the local marine trophic network off the north west coast of Africa, and by analysing stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes were able to verify the distribution and trophic position of 13 mammal species and also that of other species of macro seaweed, marine plants, fish, molluscs, turtles and phytoplankton, which had never been studied before.

The monk seal (Monachus monachus) and the Atlantic hump-backed dolphin (Sousa teuszii) are "the most coastal species of the whole area studied, and are the only ones occupying this marine ecosystem," says Ana M. Pinela, lead author of the study and a researcher at the University of Barcelona (UB).

The Portuguese scientist says this area, which is so "extremely" over-exploited by both industrial and traditional fishing "should be a conservation priority for these species, which are important for biodiversity. If they disappear, it would be hard for others to take their place." This would cause a "serious" imbalance "at all levels" in local coastal ecosystems, which would remain without two super-predators that are "essential" for them to function properly.

The study, which has been published in Marine Ecology Progress Series, shows the importance of the predators Monachus monachus and Sousa teuszii for the proper functioning of coastal ecosystems in Mauritania.

The killer whale (Orcinus orca), which is also present in Mauritania, feeds at the same trophic level as the monk seal, meaning it feeds on fish, and not on marine mammals as it does off some other coasts. However, "its range is much more pelagic (of open oceans)," says Pinela, who has described the offshore ecotype of the killer whales in this region for the first time.

"Unprecedented" fishing exploitation

"Mauritania contains some of the most heavily-exploited fisheries habitats in the whole world, with one of the world's largest fisheries stocks, which is subject to very little regulation, inspection or control," explains the researcher. Two of the world's most threatened species live off this coast -- the monk seal, which is on the verge of extinction, and the hump-backed dolphin, which has a very limited geographic range and is little known.

The scientists say conservation of these coastal areas should be "a priority." "The Mauritanian Government and international agencies should more strongly monitor both industrial and traditional fisheries exploitation both in deep sea and coastal areas," says Pinela. Over-fishing and the over-exploitation of resources limits the availability of prey for these species and damages ecosystems.

The research team is calling for "more diligent" regulation of such fishing practices, monitoring and control of the fishing fleet, "be it Mauritanian or international," and the implementation of sustainable fishing off the north west of Africa.

In addition, estimates should be made of fish abundance and catches in the entire study area, because it is "a biodiversity hotspot that is home to a great diversity of marine mammals," concludes Pinela.

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Rare monk seal colony found in the Mediterranean

Victoria Gill BBC News 31 Dec 10;

Scientists have found a colony of rare Mediterranean monk seals at an undisclosed location in Greece.

The species is the world's most endangered seal, and one of the most endangered marine mammals - fewer than 600 individuals remain.

Researchers are keeping the location of the colony secret to avoid having the seals disturbed by human visitors.

It is the only place in the region where seals lie on open beaches, rather than hide in coastal caves.

Alexandros Karamanlidis, scientific co-ordinator of the Mom/Hellenic Society for the Study and Protection of the Monk seal, explained that this was the seals' "original behaviour".

"It is human disturbance that has caused the species to retreat to inaccessible caves," he told BBC News.

"So this place is incredibly important - the seals feel so secure that they go out on to open beaches."

The Mom researchers, whose society name is derived from the Latin name of the species, Monachus monachus, have been monitoring and studying monk seals for more than 20 years.

This has not been an easy task when most of the animals now live in areas that are not visible from the water line.

By driving the seals into secluded caves, the scientists say, human activity has also affected the number of seal pups that survive into adulthood.

Dr Karamanlidis explained: "Because of human disturbance, [the seals] give birth in these coastal caves, [meaning that] more pups die during storms."

The number of seal pups born annually in the newly discovered colony on this tiny island is amongst the highest recorded anywhere in the Mediterranean Sea.

The team has placed cameras on the island to study the seals remotely.

The area's popularity with tourists has gradually driven the animals away from other beaches, and the scientists hope to stop the same thing happening on this island.

"It's a small island in the Aegean with nice sandy beaches," Dr Karamanlidis told BBC News.

"So if it remains open to people, the place will get crowded and the seals will start going away again."

More than half of the world's remaining monk seals live in Greece.

The society is now appealing to the Greek government to make the part of the island where the seals live, and its inshore waters, a marine protected area.

"The seals only survive in Greece because we have these isolated islands that people do not have access to," said Dr Karamanlidis.

"So we're trying to make this a place where the seals feel secure."

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