IMPORTANT NOTE:


Appended below are more messages from the marine mammal listserve. Please take the toxin analyses described in them with a grain of salt. As Jose Franco notified the Phycotoxins list a few days ago, neither he not the European Community Reference Laboratory on Marine Biotoxins has done any analyses, despite the statements in the message below. The remainder of the information is interesting and presumably more accurate.

Don Anderson

THE MEDITERRANEAN MONK SEAL DIE-OFF CONTINUES AND THREATENS THE CAP BLANC COLONY

The mass mortality that since past May 19 is afflicting the Mediterranean monk seal population of Cape Blanc continues and is producing a significant impact in the colony. Counts of haul-out seals in the main caves, wich during the month of May of the last four years ranged 40-80 individuals, have in the last three days dropped to 17-37. Mortality continues to extensively affect adults seals fo both sexes, but in the last two days one juvenile and two subadults have also died. It is feared that this may indicate an extension of the mortality to the nonadult segment of population, wich until now appeared to evade the causative agent.

The caves were the reproductive segment of the population usually haul-out are almost devoid of selas, with only some descomposing corpses inside. Four orphaned seals pup (two males and two females) have been collected from inside the caves by the spanish LIFE/CE team and the Parc National du Banc d'Arguin, and put under treatment at the Maurutanian Centre National de Recherches Oceanographiques et des Peches to keep them alive. Veterinarians from this center, the RSPCA Norfolk Wildlife Hospital, the Seal Rescue Center of Pieterburen and the Laboratorio Forense de Vida Silvestre have joined efforts to ensure their survival.

CAUSATIVE AGENT OF THE MEDITERRANEAN MONK SEAL DIE-OFF IDENTIFIED

Results of high performance liquid chromatography analysis (HPLC) on blubber and liver samples from two monk seals diseased during the die-off have shown extremely high levels of 23 different saxitoxins (PSP) and their metabolites. The analysis carried out by E. Costas (Dep. Genetics, Faculty of Veterinary, University of Madrid), J. Franco (Spanish Institute of Oceanography of Vigo) and the Community Laboratory of Biotoxins, have shown that in particular, Neosaxitoxin and GTX4-Saxitoxin, were found at lethal levels in the tissues. Research to identify the toxins continues and the finding of other similar agents cannot be discarded. However, these results clearly indicate that intoxication by the ingestion of saxitoxins produced by dinoflagellates is the causative agent of the massive mortality that has afflicted the Cabo Blanco population of Mediterranean monk seals in the last weeks. This result is further substantiated by the finding of high concentrations of Alexandrium minutum, Gymnodinium catenatum and Dynophisis acuta, three highly toxic dinoflagellates, in the water adjacent to the main caves where monk seals haul-out

Luis Felipe Lopez Jurado, Dep. of Biology, University of Las Palmas of Gran Canaria.
Luis Mariano Gonzalez, Ministerio de Medio Ambiente, Madrid
Alex Aguilar, Dep. Animal Biology, Universitry of Barcelona
Esteve Grau, Dep. Animal Biology, Universitry of Barcelona
Mauro Hernandez, Laboratorio Forense de Vida Silvestre, Madrid
Ian Robinson, Norfolk Wildlife Hospital (RSPCA).