"We are sitting at the cusp of a catastrophe. There are literally thousands of seal pups being born prematurely and dying almost immediately," OCN said. "This is a natural phenomenon - meaning that when the pregnant female feels she does not have enough reserves, she can abort her fetus. This happens every year to a few individuals, but never on this scale!"
Seals give birth in the middle of November, but sometimes you can see prematurely born seal pups in October. Premature seal pups cannot survive. They are too young and not fully developed.
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{GRAPHIC CONTENT} We are sitting at the cusp of a catastrophe. There are literally thousands of seal pups being born prematurely and dying almost immediately. This is a natural phenomenon - meaning that when the pregnant female feels she does not have enough reserves, she can abort her fetus. This happens every year to a few individuals, but never on this scale! We also cannot rule out the presence of toxins or disease, so we have been working around the clock with some amazing scientists and the @namibiandolphinproject collecting samples and doing drone surveys to measure the extent. We will keep you updated on our findings๐ Note: all the small black spots on the drone photos are dead pups....
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A few premature deaths is a natural event, but thousands of premature dead seal pups is extremely rare. The beaches are full of little black lumps, OCN said.
According to OCN, there are different reasons for these deaths. The most probable one is starvation; fish might have moved too far away from Pelican Point.
"Our seals look a bit thin, it could likely be caused by a lack of food," they said. "Other seal colonies look much better, the seals are fatter and they don't record the same amount of premature pups."
Other reasons could be toxins or diseases. OCN is working with the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine resources to collect samples to conduct biopsies and tests.
OCN said a tragedy like this had happened before in 1994 when starvation led to the loss of roughly a third of the seal population at Pelican Point in Namibia.
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This is the situation at Pelican Point. All the little red circles mark dead seal pups. A rough estimate brings the numbers to more than 5000 at our seal colony alone. This is tragic, as it makes up a large portion of the new pup arrivals expected in late November. OCN has been assisting the Officials with sample collections and surveys, and hopefully we can get some answers soon.
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