The deadliest known outbreak of a measles-like virus in bottlenose dolphins has killed a record number of the animals along the US Atlantic coast since July, officials said on Friday.
A total of 753 bottlenose dolphins have washed up from New York to Florida from July 1 until Sunday last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.
That is more than 10 times the number of dolphins that would typically turn up dead along East Coast beaches, NOAA Fisheries Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program coordinator Teri Rowles said.
“Historic averages for this same time frame, same geographic area is only 74, so you get an idea of the scope,” she told reporters.
The death toll is also higher than the more than 740 strandings in the last major Atlantic morbillivirus outbreak in 1987 to 1988.
And they have come in a much shorter time period, leading officials to anticipate this event could get much worse.
“It is expected that the confirmed mortalities will be higher,” Rowles said.
“If this plays out similar to the ‘87 to ‘88 die-off, we are less than halfway through that time frame,” she said.
The cause of death is morbillivirus, a form of measles that is similar to canine distemper and can cause pneumonia, suppressed immune function and usually fatal brain infections.
There is no evidence that cetacean morbillivirus can cause disease in people.
However, sick dolphins can also have bacterial or fungal infections that do pose risks to people, so beachcombers are advised not to approach stranded animals, but rather to call a local stranding network for help. The virus spreads among dolphins in close contact.
A handful of washed up humpback whales and pygmy sperm whales have also tested positive for morbillivirus, but scientists have not been able to confirm that morbillivirus was the cause of those deaths since the animals were too decomposed by the time tests could be done.
Among bottlenose dolphins, immunity to the virus has been decreasing, particularly in the younger animals as time has gone by since the last outbreak 25 years ago.
“So we know we had a susceptible population, but just being susceptible alone is not how the outbreaks go,” she said. “We are trying to understand where this virus came from and how it got into the population in which it is now circulating.”
Recent tests on three other species that have been found stranded — spotted dolphins, harp seals and common dolphins — have all been negative for morbillivirus.
Without a way to vaccinate the wild population, there is little that officials can do, but collect the carcasses and continue to study them.
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
Australians were downloading virtual private networks (VPNs) in droves, while one of the world’s largest porn distributors said it was blocking users from its platforms as the country yesterday rolled out sweeping online age restriction. Australia in December became the first country to impose a nationwide ban on teenagers using social media. A separate law now requires artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot services to keep certain content — including pornography, extreme violence and self-harm and eating disorder material — from minors or face fines of up to A$49.5 million (US$34.6 million). The country also joined Britain, France and dozens of US states requiring
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
STILL IN POWER: US intelligence reports showed that the Iranian regime is not in danger of collapse and retains control of the public, casting doubt on Trump’s exit Nearly every US Senate Democrat on Wednesday signed a letter sent to US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting a “swift investigation” of airstrikes on a girls’ school in Iran that killed scores of children and any other potential US military actions causing civilian harm. Reuters reported on Thursday last week that US military investigators believe it is likely that US forces were responsible for the Feb. 28 strike on the school, as US and Israeli forces launched attacks on Iran. “The results of this school attack are horrific. The majority of those killed in the strikes were girls between the ages
RSS