Hundreds of seals die mysteriously in Kazakhstan
Pastor Dale Morgan
Hundreds of seals die mysteriously in Kazakhstan*
ALMATY, April 24 (AFP) Apr 24, 2007
Nearly 700 dead seals, mostly cubs, have been found on Kazakhstan's
Caspian sea beaches, authorities said Tuesday, admitting that the cause
of their demise was still a mystery.
Since March 30, 674 seals, including 524 cubs, have been washed up in
the Manguistau region in the eastern Caspian, the local office of the
environment ministry said.
Officials said they were not certain what caused the deaths but it could
be Phocine Distemper Virus (PDV), also known as "seal plague".
"It could be PDV, which tends to appear after a mild winter," Kajimourat
Khairouchev, head of the emergency ministry's regional office, told AFP.
The virus killed 12,000 seals in the Caspian in 2000.
The seal population in the Caspian has dropped from more than a million
a century ago to just 100,000 now.
Environmentalists blame pollution, which they say has weakened the
seals' immune systems, making them vulnerable to virus attack.