Results of 250 Seal Autopsies Revealed *PIC* ??

Published on March 21, 2011

Juris Graney

It may be an unsatisfactory answer to conspiracy theorists and scientists investigating the deaths of up to 250 harp seals earlier this year but at this stage it appears to be the only answer.

Topics : Department of Fisheries and Oceans , Boat Harbour , St. John’s , St. Anthony

Sometimes animals just die of natural causes.

                                        Transcontinental file photo

Stewart Parrill collected five dead harp seals that washed ashore near his community of Eddies Cove East and, thanks to chilly temperatures on the Northern Peninsula, kept them frozen outside. Mr. Parrill, who regularly collects seal…

Exhaustive testing in St. John’s has ruled out injury, trauma, starvation and infectious disease as possible causes of death of the seals, some of which were washed up in Boat Harbour.

Winnipeg-based Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ marine mammal health scientist Ole Neilson will undertake one more test but being that provincial veterinarian pathologist Laura Rogers sampled organs from the brain to the bladder for signs of disease but came up empty – the mystery may never be solved.

DFO biologist Dr. Garry Stenson said they considered everything from algal bloom cycle known as a red tideright through to underwater seismic activity that has been known to disorientate whales who eventually beach themselves.

Perversely, considering the mammals in question, the one thing that can’t be ruled out is drowning.

“When they are under water their normal reflex is to shut down all breathing and some studies years looked at what happen when seals drown and in fact they don’t do anything, they lose consciousness,” he said.

“They don’t swallow water, you don’t see any signs of drowning hence you are never able to rule it out but harp seals are in the water almost all the time.”

The DFO chartered a twin otter plane to collect frozen carcasses from St. Anthony airport and Makkovik on January 21.

Some of the mammals weighed as much as 300 pounds and took three days to completely thaw before tests could begin. Samples from seven more were collected by DFO officers from Boat Harbour the previous week.

“It’s really tough to come up with a diagnosis when you come across a dead animal unless it’s something obvious,” he said.

“A lot of things you don’t see signs of, especially if they are acute. Often it’s the symptoms prior to death that give you your best indication of what it could be but of course we didn’t get any of that.

“The interesting thing about it was that almost all of the adults we looked at, most were females, which could have been a sampling issue, but they were mature adults, which is unusual.

“Of the females, there was a mix, some were not pregnant, some given birth, some still had fetuses, which is exactly what you’d expect to see with a cross section of adult so it wasn’t related to reproductive state.”

Through varying states of decomposition, scientists believe that they may not have died at the same place at the same time meaning natural mortality could account for their deaths.

“It’s always a bit frustrating but given the circumstances it’s not easy to come up with answers,” he said.

“Considering the size of the population is around nine million and the natural mortality rate of adults is about four per cent, there are a couple of hundreds of thousands of seals that die per year.”

But the search for answers is not over as a number of marine mammal health vets have been in contact with DFO.

“We still have some samples, so if they have anything else they want to test for we’d be more than happy to provide them with samples,” he said.

SOURCE: nlnewsnow.com

Fair use: educational

Can blind seals see to catch food ?

Physician on Corexit: Ethylene glycol is antifreeze, Methanol is wood alcohol — 10 CCs blinds you, 30 CCs kills you