FLICKR, LOWJUMPINGFROGA spate of bottlenose dolphin deaths along the Eastern seaboard is likely due to a morbillivirus, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The virus is the same one that killed more than 700 dolphins from 1987 to 1988, The Washington Post reported.
More than 300 dolphins have washed up dead between New York and North Carolina since July. In an average year, only around 36 dolphins end up stranded along the East Coast. Eleven cases of cetacean morbillivirus infection were recently confirmed by genetic sequencing, NOAA said, and 32 of 33 dolphins tested using various methods are confirmed or suspected to have been infected with morbillivirus.
Jerry Saliki, a virologist at the University of Georgia, blamed reduced immunity to the virus among dolphins. “When the collective immunity drops below a certain, critical point, which we don’t really know for marine mammals, then the whole population becomes susceptible,” he told The Washington Post.
Related to human measles, morbillivirus can be fatal to dolphins by weakening their immune systems ...
