An Unprecedented Die-Off Of Thousands Of Seal Pups On A Namibia Beach Mystifies Conservationists

Africanews

When we hear of dolphins or whales beaching themselves to die, it saddens us. Any unnatural death of an animal or mammal is  puzzling, to say the least. But about 5,000 seal pups washing ashore dead on a Namibia beach is truly shocking and bizarre. This happened along the coast of Pelican Point peninsula, which turned a thriving tourist destination popular for schools of dolphins and seals into a pup graveyard.

This unprecedented die-off of 5,000 Cape fur seals puzzles and alarms  conservationist groups, and is being looked into by the country’s fisheries ministry. Cape fur seals are often called the “dogs of the ocean”  as they are playful and full of energy. But, they are known to desert their young or suffer miscarriages when food supplies dwindle. Nearly all the seal pups were born prematurely before quickly dying, according to Naude Dreyer, marine biologist of Ocean Conservation Namibia.


Dreyer said, When the pregnant female feels she does not have enough reserves, she can abort. A few premature deaths is a natural event, but thousands of premature dead pups is extremely rare.” Dreyer noticed the shocking masses of dead seal pups while flying his drone over the Pelican Point seal colony earlier this month. His non profit group posted on Facebook, This is the situation at Pelican Point, Namibia, All the little red circles mark dead seal pups. A rough estimate brings the numbers to more than 5,000 at our seal colony alone. This is tragic, as it makes up a large portion of the new pup arrivals expected in late November.” 

The seals are usually found thriving across the southern Atlantic coastlines of Africa, from Namibia, south Africa, to the southern tip of Angola. According to Dr. Tess Gridley, Normally Cape fur seals would give birth from mid-November until early December. That’s the height of pupping that we would normally expect but what has been happening this year is there has been an increase in abortions that was first seen starting in August and really sort of peaked just last week in October.”  It does seem that this year really is a bad year, and it is not yet over.

Bloomberg

Conservationist groups have noticed that female cape fur seals have seemed increasingly emaciated and starving, which is alarming, as it affects long-term health and eventually the seal population. There are about 1.7 million cape fur seals in total and about a million of those are actually in Namibia so in terms of the overall number of animals, they are quite resilient to these effects,”  explains Dr. Gridley.

She continues, But one issue that we do think might happen in the future is you will see a dip in reproduction potentially going forward particularly now for those animals that have unfortunately died. They are not going to be recruited into the population, so you might see a localized effect at the Pelican Point colony and also we are trying to monitor to see whether there is a wider scale impact that might affect other colonies as well.”


An explanation could be the absence of fish in the region, and the spread of toxins and disease in the water. These are just a few of the reasons being studied to explain the massive die-off. The seals look a bit thin and it could likely be caused by a lack of food,” Dreyer explained. Other seal colonies at other beaches look much better and they do not record the same amount of premature pups.”

 Hopefully things in the region improve quickly. These massive die-offs should serve as a warning that something is terribly wrong, and should be addressed immediately.

 

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