Bottlenose dolphins off US coast hit by measles-like virus

Bottlenose dolphins off US coast hit by measles-like virus



More than 1,000 migratory bottlenose dolphins have died from a measles-like virus along the US eastern seaboard in 2013 and the epidemic shows no sign of abating, a marine biologist said on Monday. The death toll exceeds the 740 dolphins killed during the last big outbreak of the then unknown virus in 1987-88.

“It is having a significant impact and that is something we’re monitoring closely,” said Erin Fougeres, a marine mammal biologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

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Adult Pacific bottlenose dolphins. Photograph: Michael Nolan/SplashdownDirect

An estimated 39,206 bottlenose dolphins populated the eastern seaboard, to a depth of 25 feet, from New Jersey to Central Florida in 2010, according to the latest NOAA census.

Scientists are trying to determine why the morbillivirus resurged this year. The dolphins, which migrate south for the winter, have been stranded or found dead on beaches from New York to Florida since June, Fougeres said. An unknown number of affected dolphins probably died offshore as well, she said.

A record number of manatees have also died in Florida waters this year, mostly from a toxic algae bloom in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the state’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The commission’s research institute said it documented 803 manatee deaths in state waters between 1 January and 13 December, the most for any year since record keeping began in 1974.

The morbillivirus virus outbreaks could be natural and simply cyclical, said Fougeres. “The last occurrence of this was about 25 years ago and the animals that survived that would have natural antibodies. But as those animals slowly die out and new animals are not exposed, they may not have that immunity,” Fougeres said.

Theories related to global warming or pollution are being investigated “There could be underlying causes that made them more susceptible this year versus other years,” Fougeres said.

Scientists in the late 1980s estimated that the morbillivirus wiped out 50% of the coastal migratory dolphins. As a result, the bottlenose dolphin was designated as depleted under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, a status it still retains.

A study released last week by NOAA showed that some dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico were gravely ill from injuries consistent with petroleum hydrocarbon exposure. The study looked at dolphin from Louisiana’s Barataria Bay heavily affected by BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill in 2010.

This article was written and published by the Guardian.

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