The Impact of Avian Flu: 17,000 Elephant Seals Lost in Argentina

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Over 17,000 elephant seals died last

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year off the coast of Argentina. You're probably wondering, was it due to

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overfishing? Was it due to climate change? No,

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it was actually due to the avian flu. The H5N1

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virus hit that colony last year and over 17,000 individual elephant seals

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died last year. There's a lot of implications because

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of this, and scientists are saying that this is gonna affect the population for

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decades to come. Because of other things that prevent the

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colony from expanding, like climate change, like

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overfishing, lack of food resources, you know, heating

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of the ocean, which has to do with climate change, of course. But there are a lot

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of things that we need to talk about to find out, like, how does a

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virus like this wipe out so many and how does that

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affect a colony in the future? We're going to talk about that on today's episode

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of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey

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everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

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I'm your host Andrew Lua, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how

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you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by

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taking action. And today we're going to be talking about elephant seals, and

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your ocean news resource. Let's get into it. Let's talk about elephant seals.

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Look, elephant seals are great. We've had on experts before that talk

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about Neil the seal, for instance, in Tasmania, but

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also we talk a lot about marine mammals and whales and

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so forth, and we know that marine mammals are susceptible to

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diseases. And we know that can take out a population. It

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can take out a big chunk of the population. And seals and

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sea lions and elephant seals have been known to lose a lot of

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animals if a virus just comes in and takes them

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out. And they're affected by it. They don't have the ability

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to fight off that virus. And that happened last

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year with the avian flu. The H5N1

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virus hit the colony off the coast of Argentina and over

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17,000 seals died, including approximately 97% of the pups during

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the outbreak. 97% of the next generation, a slow Growing

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generation, right? This is a slow-growing species. So it

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takes a while to get to sexual maturity It takes a while to reproduce and it takes a

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while to grow to adulthood That is going to reduce

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the population this season only about one-third of the expected seal

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population has returned To the area. This

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is in the peninsula Valdez off the coast of Argentina That

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is a huge Huge problem in

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the sustaining the population of that elephant seal population, right?

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Unfortunately, the h151 had sorry the h5n1

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virus has adapted to marine mammals Spreading efficiently

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and evolving into distinct strains for avian and marine hosts.

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So this is an avian flu So you probably how does it get from one host to

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the other viruses change they evolve they evolve

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quickly That's what makes it so so dangerous. We

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know that You know, the COVID virus that we had,

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that changed quite rapidly, and we kept seeing new strains and

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new strains. That's why new vaccines kept coming out, because they

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needed to ensure that the new vaccines would actually

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stop the new viruses and the evolution of those viruses that

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kept infecting people and reinfecting people. I know I

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got COVID a couple times, even though I got the vaccines, but I

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know my symptoms were a lot less. But it's not as if you can go and vaccinate

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an entire population. And so that becomes, it

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really becomes difficult when strains evolves from avian

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to marine mammals and they come into distinct populations now,

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right? And obviously, you know, researchers are saying that

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this event is going to set back the population for

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decades. As I mentioned, this is a slow-growing species. It

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takes a long time for them to get to sexual maturity. It

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takes a long time for them to get to adulthood. And if you lose

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97% of the pups from that year, you're missing an entire year

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of animals that are going to grow to sexual maturity. That's going to affect them

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later on down the road. And who knows what's going to affect them in

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the future? Could the H5N1 virus come

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back and hit them again? That's possible. If

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the H5N1 virus remains present in

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marine or coastal ecosystems, there is a risk of recurring outbreaks among

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elephant seals. to

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the virus, but will it adapt to the next version of

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the virus is the big question. A sharp decline in

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the population and loss of genetic diversity could make the seals

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more susceptible to future outbreaks or other

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environmental stressors. And of course, the transmission from birds

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still remains primarily, even though it's an avian influenza,

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migrating birds or other carriers could

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reintroduce the virus into seal habitat. look

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there could be a potential immunity there could be whales that

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survive the first outbreak may have the uh

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the the the i guess the makeup the the gene

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makeup to fight off an h5n1 virus which

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is great to see and that populates that those populations will

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eventually reproduce and maybe have a better chance

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against the H5N1 virus. I mean, this is evolution at

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its finest right here. The strongest will survive. The

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animals, right, the individuals with the gene makeup that could fight

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off this virus will survive to the next generation. Unfortunately,

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the pups were probably too young and did not have the immune system to

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fight it off. But that's why there were so many that died. But

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the adults, some of the adults may have survived. A lot of

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these colonies are massive. If you have 17,000, over

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17,000 die off, you know you're going to have a lot that are still surviving. And

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as they regrow, they'll regrow even stronger. As the population grows,

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they'll grow even stronger, right? But it's going to

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require a lot of increased monitoring, rapid

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response strategies by conservationists and researchers to

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mitigate future risks, making sure that animals are tested,

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making sure that these animals are not in close confinement

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if they are infected. If you think about what a

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seal population looks like, a haul-out area looks like, you're looking

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at the elephant seals being very, very close together.

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You thought humans were close together in a household, or in a neighborhood, or

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at a mall, or in a school, things like that, when they're

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in the hallways. Those viruses can

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transmit just like that with a cough, or sneeze,

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or anything like that. Imagine elephant seals, they're almost stacked

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on top of each other a lot of the times, especially their pups. They're

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in close quarters. They're protected by the adults. And so any

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adults that were affected or even pups that were affected could

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spread it very easily as they are so close together. So

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it is a possible that the H5N1 virus

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could spread. virus will affect the elephant seal

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population in the future. Obviously ongoing research and monitoring is

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and conservation efforts will play a critical role in minimizing the

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risk and supporting the population recovery, but that's going

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to require funding, that's going to require prioritizing the population over

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other monitoring aspects because when you look

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at conservation efforts It's about funding. It's

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about making sure that the right people and the right amount of people are

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in the right place at the right time, ensuring that these populations are

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safe. And that, unfortunately, will probably take resources away from one

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aspect, prioritize the elephant seal population to

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ensure that they go further. And that's really what it

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comes down to. So it is a tough situation

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to hear about elephant seal populations. declining by

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so much obviously 97% of pups that must have been Absolutely

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atrocious to witness as conservationists, as

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scientists, as researchers, onlookers. It's

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not fun to even hear about. These pups are adorable. They're

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the future of this colony. And 97% of them dying is

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really, really distressing from a conservationist perspective or

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anybody's perspective. Nobody wants to see a baby seal, a

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pup, die. It's got to be horrible. They didn't

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even have a chance to survive. Hopefully the efforts

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to help them out for next season will

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be there, but I'll be following this story to ensure

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that that happens. So hopefully this was an

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article off of the newsroom for the Wildlife Conservation Society.

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I'll hopefully try and get more information from them and see what we

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can do to help out as a community. But thank you. That's it for today's

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episode. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's

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