While many have been focused on the massive die-offs of fish and sea life off the South Florida coastline triggered by a combined outbreak of red tide and blue-green algae, all is not well along the New England coast either. An unusually large number of seals have been dying this summer.
Close to 600 harbor and gray seals have died along the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts since July. The unexpectedly high death rate has caused the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to declare a pinniped unusual mortality event (UME) along the Northeast Coast.
NOAA investigators are trying to identify the cause of the deaths but so far have no clear answer. NOAA reports that “preliminary testing has found some seals positive for either avian influenza or phocine distemper virus. We have many more samples to process and analyze, so it is still too soon to determine if either or both of these viruses are the primary cause of the mortality event.”
The unexplained deaths come after a significant recovery of the seal populations, particularly the gray seals which were hunted to near extinction before the Marine Mammal Protection Act made it illegal to systematically kill the animals in 1973.
Thanks to Alaric Bond for contributing to this post.
A seal will eat upwards to 10# of fish a day. We have a fish shortage, I can remember a time when one could catch cod not far off shore. No longer. But back to the seal population.
With close to 600 dead ones so far this year, only 71,263 left to go! YEAH, there is hope!
First I have heard of this and I live on the coast of Maine. In particular Frenchman’s Bay.
Joe Howarth, thats caused by commercial over-fishing, not seals!
I believe Joe is trying to note that a population of 71,000 seals hardly merits the need of a NOAA scare tactic for 600 seals. Or at least that is my take on Joes view. The better questioion omtted by the above story is where in particular in Maine is the die off happening? Is it near a particular area? Are factories possibly to blame? Tourist boats, as there has been a large concern that these monolithic tourism boats may be the cause for many things.
Yet 600 seals could have died in Portland area alone. The other thing is since Obama left office. Many government agencies have been trimmed. These said agencies are doing “shock and awe” practices to get funding back.