Biologist Valeria Falabella’s voice breaks as she describes the devastating scene. It was October 2023 when she and her team climbed down onto Punta Delgada Beach, in the Valdés Peninsula, a remote corner of central Argentina. While they were aware that avian flu had made its way across the Pacific, nothing had prepared them for what they were about to find. In the first harem of southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) something was off: several pups lay lifeless. “In that moment there weren’t many [dead pups], but as we kept walking we saw the first dead adult,” says Falabella, director of coastal marine conservation at WCS Argentina. “In all the time I’d worked on beaches surveying elephant seals, I’d never seen a dead one; it was shocking.” A few meters away, they found several South American terns (Sterna hirundinacea) writhing in the sand, showing clear signs of the infection. The team withdrew immediately and, using their binoculars, confirmed the inevitable: this was only the tip of the iceberg. Two days later, they returned to monitor the situation and assess the magnitude of the disaster. Elephant seals affected by avian flu in October 2023. Image courtesy of Ralph Vanstreels. “When we went back to the beach to count and observe the seals in more detail, the picture was bleak. Seventy percent of the pups were dead or dying,” Falabella says. “By that time there were several dead adult females too. The impact was huge.” That year, 17,500 pups and an undetermined…This article was originally published on Mongabay

From Conservation news via this RSS feed