Over 17,000 elephant seals died last year off the coast of Argentina. You're probably wondering, was it due to overfishing? Was it due to climate change? No, it was actually due to the avian flu. The H5N1 virus hit that colony last year and over 17,000 individual elephant seals died last year. There's a lot of implications because of this, and scientists are saying that this is gonna affect the population for
decades to come. Because of other things that prevent the colony from expanding, like climate change, like overfishing, lack of food resources, you know, heating of the ocean, which has to do with climate change, of course. But there are a lot of things that we need to talk about to find out, like, how does a virus like this wipe out so many and how does that affect a colony in the future? We're going to talk about that on today's episode
of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lua, and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And today we're going to be talking about elephant seals, and
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are important for you to apply for. So speakupforblue.com forward slash ocean or forward slash newsletter speakupforblue.com forward slash newsletter is the place to go to sign up for your ocean news resource. Let's get into it. Let's talk about elephant seals. Look, elephant seals are great. We've had on experts before that talk about Neil the seal, for instance, in Tasmania, but also we talk a lot about marine mammals and whales and so forth, and we know that marine mammals are susceptible to
diseases. And we know that can take out a population. It can take out a big chunk of the population. And seals and sea lions and elephant seals have been known to lose a lot of animals if a virus just comes in and takes them out. And they're affected by it. They don't have the ability to fight off that virus. And that happened last year with the avian flu. The H5N1 virus hit the colony off the coast of Argentina and over 17,000 seals died, including approximately 97% of the pups during
the outbreak. 97% of the next generation, a slow Growing generation, right? This is a slow-growing species. So it takes a while to get to sexual maturity It takes a while to reproduce and it takes a while to grow to adulthood That is going to reduce the population this season only about one-third of the expected seal
population has returned To the area. This is in the peninsula Valdez off the coast of Argentina That is a huge Huge problem in the sustaining the population of that elephant seal population, right? Unfortunately, the h151 had sorry the h5n1 virus has adapted to marine mammals Spreading efficiently and evolving into distinct strains for avian and marine hosts. So this is an avian flu So you probably how does it get from one host to the other viruses change they evolve they evolve
quickly That's what makes it so so dangerous. We know that You know, the COVID virus that we had, that changed quite rapidly, and we kept seeing new strains and new strains. That's why new vaccines kept coming out, because they needed to ensure that the new vaccines would actually stop the new viruses and the evolution of those viruses that kept infecting people and reinfecting people. I know I got COVID a couple times, even though I got the vaccines, but I
know my symptoms were a lot less. But it's not as if you can go and vaccinate an entire population. And so that becomes, it really becomes difficult when strains evolves from avian to marine mammals and they come into distinct populations now, right? And obviously, you know, researchers are saying that this event is going to set back the population for decades. As I mentioned, this is a slow-growing species. It takes a long time for them to get to sexual maturity. It
takes a long time for them to get to adulthood. And if you lose 97% of the pups from that year, you're missing an entire year of animals that are going to grow to sexual maturity. That's going to affect them later on down the road. And who knows what's going to affect them in the future? Could the H5N1 virus come back and hit them again? That's possible. If the H5N1 virus remains present in marine or coastal ecosystems, there is a risk of recurring outbreaks among
elephant seals. to the virus, but will it adapt to the next version of the virus is the big question. A sharp decline in the population and loss of genetic diversity could make the seals more susceptible to future outbreaks or other environmental stressors. And of course, the transmission from birds still remains primarily, even though it's an avian influenza, migrating birds or other carriers could
reintroduce the virus into seal habitat. look there could be a potential immunity there could be whales that survive the first outbreak may have the uh the the the i guess the makeup the the gene makeup to fight off an h5n1 virus which is great to see and that populates that those populations will eventually reproduce and maybe have a better chance against the H5N1 virus. I mean, this is evolution at
its finest right here. The strongest will survive. The animals, right, the individuals with the gene makeup that could fight off this virus will survive to the next generation. Unfortunately, the pups were probably too young and did not have the immune system to fight it off. But that's why there were so many that died. But the adults, some of the adults may have survived. A lot of these colonies are massive. If you have 17,000, over
17,000 die off, you know you're going to have a lot that are still surviving. And as they regrow, they'll regrow even stronger. As the population grows, they'll grow even stronger, right? But it's going to require a lot of increased monitoring, rapid response strategies by conservationists and researchers to mitigate future risks, making sure that animals are tested, making sure that these animals are not in close confinement
if they are infected. If you think about what a seal population looks like, a haul-out area looks like, you're looking at the elephant seals being very, very close together. You thought humans were close together in a household, or in a neighborhood, or at a mall, or in a school, things like that, when they're in the hallways. Those viruses can transmit just like that with a cough, or sneeze, or anything like that. Imagine elephant seals, they're almost stacked
on top of each other a lot of the times, especially their pups. They're in close quarters. They're protected by the adults. And so any adults that were affected or even pups that were affected could spread it very easily as they are so close together. So it is a possible that the H5N1 virus could spread. virus will affect the elephant seal
population in the future. Obviously ongoing research and monitoring is and conservation efforts will play a critical role in minimizing the risk and supporting the population recovery, but that's going to require funding, that's going to require prioritizing the population over other monitoring aspects because when you look
at conservation efforts It's about funding. It's about making sure that the right people and the right amount of people are in the right place at the right time, ensuring that these populations are safe. And that, unfortunately, will probably take resources away from one aspect, prioritize the elephant seal population to ensure that they go further. And that's really what it comes down to. So it is a tough situation
to hear about elephant seal populations. declining by so much obviously 97% of pups that must have been Absolutely atrocious to witness as conservationists, as scientists, as researchers, onlookers. It's not fun to even hear about. These pups are adorable. They're the future of this colony. And 97% of them dying is really, really distressing from a conservationist perspective or anybody's perspective. Nobody wants to see a baby seal, a pup, die. It's got to be horrible. They didn't
even have a chance to survive. Hopefully the efforts to help them out for next season will be there, but I'll be following this story to ensure that that happens. So hopefully this was an article off of the newsroom for the Wildlife Conservation Society. I'll hopefully try and get more information from them and see what we can do to help out as a community. But thank you. That's it for today's episode. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's
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