Migratory bottlenose dolphins hit by virus on US eastern seaboard

The Guardian reports, 23rd December 2013: “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. 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). 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.

Bottlenose dolphins

Adult Pacific bottlenose dolphins.
Photograph: Michael Nolan/SplashdownDirect

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.

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.

Source: The Guardian, 23rd December 2013. For the full text see http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/23/bottlenose-dolphins-us-eastern-seaboard

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