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New Zealand: Rare Leopard Seal Visit Sparks Safety Warning


ONE News
Wed, 26 Oct 2011 14:48 UTC
Leopard Seal
© TVNZ
Leopard seal.

The unusual arrival of a leopard seal at an upmarket Auckland suburb has prompted the Department of Conservation to issue a safety warning.

The two-metre long seal, a native of Antarctica, was spotted on a sea wall at a Herne Bay beach.

A local woman came across the seal yesterday while walking her dog at Home Bay.

A spokesman for DOC said it is rare for a leopard seal to make it as far north as Auckland, as they are usually found along the edge of the Antarctic.

He said he thought it may be the same seal that was sighted at Kawakawa Bay last month.

Leopard seals are larger, and more aggressive, than their New Zealand counterparts and DOC is urging the public to keep away from the visitor.
      Read More...
Bug

US: Knot of Worry Tightens for Fishermen as Infectious Salmon Anemia Spreads

William Yardley
New York Times
Thu, 20 Oct 2011 01:47 UTC
salmon fishing
© Matthew Ryan Williams/NYT
Sean O'Donnell worked on the nets in Seattle after salmon fishing Wednesday.
Seattle - The scientist in Canada got the results from a respected lab and held a news conference. The ice and bait man at a fish processor in Sitka, Alaska, heard the news on Facebook. Vardon Tremain read it in the newspaper while working on his trolling boat docked here in Salmon Bay.

More scientists in Washington started talking, and 24 hours later everyone is asking more questions. As word spread that infectious salmon anemia, a deadly virus that has devastated farmed fish in Chile, had been found for the first time in prized wild Pacific salmon, there remained much uncertainty about the finding and what its potential impact could be.

So far it has been found in just two wild sockeye salmon in British Columbia and not in an active state. Nevertheless the reaction from fishermen has echoed that of some scientists: this is the last thing salmon need.

"On top of everything else, that would just be murder here," said Mr. Tremain, aboard his 40-foot boat, Heidi, at Fishermen's Terminal here.
      Read More...
Bizarro Earth

US: Mysterious Disease Killed Scores of Seals in Alaska

Yereth Rosen
Reuters
Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:56 UTC
Diseased Seal
© Reuters/North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management/Handout
A diseased ringed seal in Alaska is shown in this handout photo released to Reuters October 13, 2011.
A mysterious disease, possibly a virus, has killed scores of ring seals along Alaska's coast, according to local and federal agencies.

The diseased seals have been beaching themselves on the Arctic coastline since July, with numbers picking up in subsequent months, biologists with the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management and other agencies said on Thursday.

About 100 of the diseased animals have been found near Barrow, the nation's northernmost community, and half of those have died, the borough biologists reported.

Elsewhere in the sprawling borough, villagers have reported 146 ringed seals hauling themselves onto beaches, and many of those were diseased, the biologists said.

Ringed seals rarely come ashore, spending most of the year in the water or on floating ice, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service.
      Read More...
Question

New Zealand: Is That a Geep? Ewe Must be Kidding... it's a Shoat

Sally Rae
Otago Daily Times
Thu, 13 Oct 2011 14:05 UTC
Geep
© Otago Daily Times
The geep (front) has a lamb's body and a goat's head, legs and bleat.

No kidding - it's a geep.

When Taieri farmer Graeme Wallace brought a mob of ewes and lambs in for tailing this week, he thought the wool was being pulled over his eyes.

"I thought, 'what the hell is this? Is it a goat or is it a lamb?'

"No, it's a 50/50," Mr Wallace recalled. He thought fleetingly that the ewe mothering the mystery animal could have had a dead lamb and adopted a kid, but decided against it.

With the body of a lamb, but the head, legs and bleat of a goat, the rare male hybrid was definitely "a cross between the two".

Mr Wallace, who did not notice the animal during earlier daily lambing rounds - not that he was looking out for a geep - said it would have been sired by one of the many feral goats on the property, near Allanton.

His father told him there might be such a thing as a geep. So he looked it up on the internet that night and "sure enough" there was.

A report on the natural mating of a doe with a ram which produced a female hybrid - believed to be the first authenticated report of a sheep-goat hybrid in New Zealand - was published in the New Zealand Veterinary Journal in 1990.
      Read More...
Fish

US: In Alaska's Arctic, mysterious outbreak kills dozens of ringed seals

Alex DeMarban
Alaska Dispatch
Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:53 UTC
Ill ring seal
© North Slope Borough
An ill ringed seal on the North Slope.
A mysterious and potentially widespread disease is thought to have contributed to the deaths of dozens of ringed seals along Alaska's Arctic coast. Scores more are sickened, some so ill that skin lesions bleed when touched.

The animals are an important subsistence food, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has proposed listing them as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

In July, biologists with the North Slope Borough's Department of Wildlife Management began receiving reports of ringed seals hauled out on beaches, an unusual behavior since the animals usually prefer the water or ice. Since then, they've found at least 100 seals with telltale mangy hair and skin lesions, mostly while traveling by four-wheeler along 30 miles of Beaufort and Chukchi sea coastline outside Barrow.

At least 46 of those seals have been found dead, and experts aren't sure if the disease is killing them or if other infections and polar bears are proving fatal once the seals become feeble.
      Read More...
Eye 1

New Zealand: Rena's wildlife victims die in oil-soaked misery

Isaac Davison
nzherald.co.nz
Thu, 13 Oct 2011 15:44 UTC
Image
© Photo / Joel Ford
An oil-sodden bird dead on the beach at Mt Maunganui.

A large wandering albatross is among the latest victims in the soaring wildlife death toll caused by oil pollution from the stricken Rena off Tauranga's coast.

Rescuers are now moving larger animals from the area to prevent them being poisoned by the oil.

Cold weather has worsened the effects of the oil on seabirds. Many penguins, petrels and shearwaters have frozen to death because the oil blocked their ability to insulate themselves against cold.
      Read More...
Eye 1

US: Another Pilot Whale Dies on Cape Cod Beach


BostonHerald.com
Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:37 UTC
Truro - Biologists say for the second time this week a pilot whale has died after washing up on a Massachusetts beach.

An official with the International Fund for Animal Welfare's marine mammal research and rescue team tells the Cape Cod Times an 11-foot long adult whale was reported alive on a sandbar at Head of the Meadow Beach in Truro at about 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The mammal was dead by the time rescue crews arrived at the scene. Three or four other pilot whales were spotted swimming offshore when crews arrived.

A necropsy is expected Wednesday.

Another pilot whale died after beaching in Duxbury on Monday.

It's not clear whether the two whale deaths are connected.
      Read More...
Eye 1

US: 4 dead dolphins wash up on Gulf Coast beaches in 5 days; deaths part of 'unusual mortality event'

Ben Raines
al.com
Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:02 UTC
dead dolphin
© Courtesy of John C.S. Pierce
This dolphin was found on the Mobile Bay side of the Fort Morgan peninsula Saturday morning, one of four found since Friday. The death brings the total number of dead dolphins found since the BP oil spill to more than 400. Federal officials say an "Unusual Mortality Event" has been declared for the Gulf's dolphin population, which have been dying at a rate 5 to 10 times higher than average.

Dauphin Island, Alabama -- A dolphin carcass, bloated and violet in the morning sun, was found on Fort Morgan early Saturday, bringing the number lost since the BP oil spill to more than 400.

Three other dolphins have washed up in Alabama in the past week, including a pregnant female on Dauphin Island and a mother and calf pair on Hollingers Island in Mobile Bay.

"We should be seeing one (death) a month at this time of year," said Ruth Carmichael, a Dauphin Island Sea Lab scientist tasked with responding to reports of dead dolphins. "We're getting one or more a week. It's just never slowed down."
      Read More...
X

Australia: Mystery toxin may have killed Gold Coast horses

Arlie Felton-Taylor and Neroli Roocke
ABC
Mon, 10 Oct 2011 13:30 UTC
Image
© Tony Bartlett
Tests are continuing to determine how 21 quarter horses died on the Gold Coast.
Biosecurity Queensland's chief vet says a toxin is the mostly likely cause of the deaths of 21 horses on a single property in the state's south.

The animals started dying late last week at Kooralbyn, in the Gold Coast hinterland.

Dr Rick Symons says hendra virus has been ruled out and blood tests from ill and dead horses have shown nothing else.

Authorities are now waiting for the results of test on samples taken during autopsies.
      Read More...
Eye 1

New Zealand: First oiled penguins signal trouble


Sunlive
Sat, 08 Oct 2011 14:56 UTC
oiled penguin


This penguin’s natural colour is white and blue. He is being cared for by a veterinarian in Te Maunga.

Two oil-drenched penguins have been found washed up on Bay of Plenty beaches today, covered in the oil spilling from container ship Rena on Astrolabe reef.

The two blue penguins were found covered in oil on Papamoa and Little Waihi Beach this afternoon and have been taken to a specialist treatment facility in Te Maunga.

Wildlife Response Centre Director Brett Gartrell is attending to two blue penguins stricken by the oil and says to be helping two birds this soon highlights the coming danger.
      Read More...
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