{"id":24785,"date":"2018-09-05T00:05:11","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T07:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/?post_type=custom_news&p=24785"},"modified":"2018-09-05T12:48:02","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T19:48:02","slug":"hundreds-of-seals-have-died-in-maine","status":"publish","type":"custom_news","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/news\/hundreds-of-seals-have-died-in-maine\/","title":{"rendered":"Hundreds of Seals Have Died in Maine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since July 1, more than 460 dead seals have washed up on beaches and islands in Maine, New Hampshire, and northern Massachusetts. Another 137 coughing, sneezing, and sick seals have stranded themselves, overwhelming marine animal rescuers. In an announcement last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared the mass die-off an unusual mortality event<\/a> (UME)\u2014adding to the three other UMEs currently affecting right, humpback, and minke whales in the same waters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s heartbreaking to watch,\u201d says Lynda Doughty, executive director of Marine Mammals of Maine, the nonprofit organization that has been leading the response and rescue effort. \u201cThese animals are in tough shape.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the past three weeks, the organization has handled more than 300 animals\u2014primarily harbor seals\u2014from pups to adults. Doughty says her organization is still getting a steady flow of reports of stranded animals.<\/p>\n

Until recently, most of the affected seals were found south of Portland, Maine. But Doughty says the range of observed strandings expanded northward to the state\u2019s mid-coast beginning in late August.<\/p>\n

So far, scientists are still unclear about what is causing the deaths. Preliminary results from an investigation by NOAA Fisheries show that the seals are succumbing to two diseases: avian influenza and phocine distemper virus (PDV), with some animals testing positive for both infections.<\/p>\n

\"dead<\/a>

This dead seal, found washed up near Ogunquit, Maine, is one of the hundreds of seals to have died over the past two months. The die-off was recently declared an unusual mortality event by the government. Photo by Marine Mammals of Maine<\/p><\/div>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time seals in the region have suffered a mass die-off. In 2006, 1,500 seals from Maine to Virginia died as the result of a virus. Research on that event by Andrea Bogomolni, a pathobiologist* at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, showed that the presence of contaminants, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and algal toxins, could have contributed to the deaths by weakening the seals\u2019 immune systems and increasing the replication rate of the virus.<\/p>\n

Researchers think those toxins and toxicants may be a contributor to the current deaths, however some wonder if another factor is also at play: climate change.<\/p>\n

The Gulf of Maine is warming faster<\/a> than 99 percent of the global ocean, and this year the temperature is unprecedented. On August 30, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) declared that since July 20 the region has been experiencing a marine heatwave, a surge in water temperatures that coincides with the spike in strandings. According to the GMRI, August 8 was the second warmest day ever in the Gulf of Maine, with the sea surface temperature reaching 20.5\u00a0\u00b0C\u20143.2 degrees above the historic mean.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve set 10 daily temperature records this summer, after setting 18 this winter,\u201d said GMRI\u2019s chief scientist Andrew Pershing in a press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Globally, marine heatwaves are now occurring 54 percent more often<\/a> than they did in the early 20th century. Previous marine heatwaves, such as the Blob<\/a>, which plagued the northeast Pacific from 2013 to 2015, have been linked to<\/a> algal blooms, species shifts, mass strandings, and mass deaths of marine creatures.<\/p>\n

\"Volunteers<\/a>

Volunteers with Marine Mammals of Maine examine and treat a sick seal pup. Photo by Marine Mammals of Maine<\/p><\/div>\n

Researchers studying the recent seal die-off put varying degrees of credence in the idea that the deaths are associated with the heatwave, or with ocean warming more generally. Teri Rowles, a marine mammal health and stranding program coordinator for NOAA Fisheries, says that she and her colleagues look for underlying causes, but that \u201cit\u2019s too soon to say\u201d what these might be.<\/p>\n

William Sydeman, president and senior scientist at the nonprofit Farallon Institute, in California, was more explicit. With the scale of the temperature anomaly in the Gulf of Maine, \u201cclimate is certainly a contributing factor,\u201d he says. \u201cAnybody who says it isn\u2019t is being a little myopic.\u201d The marine heatwave is not expected to subside anytime soon\u2014the GMRI says the Gulf of Maine is especially prone to high water temperatures in the fall.<\/p>\n

Whatever the cause of the mass seal strandings, for Doughty and her team of 60 very exhausted volunteers, for now it\u2019s just about saving as many seals as they can. \u201cWe don’t know how long this will continue,\u201d Doughty says. The previous two events each lasted about six months. Rowles also revealed that there are probably hundreds of unconfirmed cases in addition to those reported.<\/p>\n

Bogomolni worries that once the rate of strandings subsides, everyone will just move on, missing the broader message the seals are sending us. \u201cHarbor seals are known to be sentinels of ocean and human health,\u201d she says. \u201cIf something is happening in the ocean environment like this, we should really start paying attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

*Correction:\u00a0Andrea Bogomolni is a pathobiologist with a doctorate from the department of pathobiology and veterinary science at the University of Connecticut. She is not a veterinary pathologist as was originally written.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since July 1, more than 460 dead seals have washed up on beaches and islands in Maine, New Hampshire, and northern Massachusetts. Another 137 coughing, sneezing, and sick seals have stranded themselves, overwhelming marine animal rescuers. In an announcement last <\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":24786,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"A mass die-off of seals has scientists searching for answers.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[22474]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":{"address":"Gulf of Maine","lat":43.748809977506156,"lng":-67.81028287812501},"related":[21183,21227],"twitterimage":24787,"facebookimage":24788,"twitterdescription":"","edited":"","factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/24785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_news"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/24785\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24810,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/24785\/revisions\/24810"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/features\/21227"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/21183"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}