GreenWatch

B. Mcpherson The cause of the dolphin deaths has been attributed to a measles like virus. No answers yet about the pelican deaths Thousands of deaths have occurred in the waters off Peru. Dolphins have been washing ashore in large numbers and thousands of sea birds, mostly pelicans have littered the shore. The jury is still out on the cause of death of the birds, but the culprit in the deaths of the dolphins has been named. Samples were sent out of country to confirm the suspicions that a virus caused the mammals deaths. “Specialists from the Marine Mammal Center (MMC), in the United States, have confirmed the death of thousands of dolphins in northern Peru was caused by the ‘morbillivirus’ .” Peru this Week   The numerous carcasses of the marine mammals have not been removed from the public and incinerated or otherwise safely disposed of, leading to criticism from an environmental NGO that the highly contagious virus might be able to “species jump” to humans. ...

By B. McPherson A deadly virus has been found in wild Pacific salmon. The virus, identified as a European strain has never before been detected in the Pacific Ocean. Young stunted sockeye salmon sampled near a concentration of open net fish farms were found to carry the deadly virus. The highly infectious microbe causes heavy losses of Atlantic salmon from Norway to Chile in the Atlantic. It is speculated that infected fish eggs were imported from Iceland. When fish are infected with the infectious salmon anemia (ISA) they lose the ability to carry oxygen in their blood and die a slow and painful death. In the wild, a sick salmon would be quickly scooped up by a predator, but in the densely packed net farms, they live for much longer, shedding viral particles for much longer, infecting those around them. Once infected, there is no treatment. The virus, first observed in fish farms in 1984 is not normally seen in the wild and its wild reservoir is not well known. In the area off Van...