Marine Mammals and Sea Turtles as Sentinels of Ecological Health

Wildlife Trust is currently coordinating a multi-tiered international collaboration of experts to share knowledge on saving stranded marine mammals and monitoring both sea turtle and marine mammal health for disease. The components of this program include: organization & training workshops, a scientist exchange program, the development of training manuals, and joint projects to include wildlife health assessments.

Our sea turtle conservation efforts focus on an epidemic disease (fibropapillomatosis) that results in tumors so large they impede the turtles' ability to swim, eat, and evade predators. A number of research projects are under way to determine the causes of this disease and how it can be stopped.

The disease has a worldwide distribution around the tropics and has been observed in all major oceans, reaching epidemic proportions in some habitats. Our studies and field observations suggest that the disease is associated with heavily polluted coastal areas, human areas with high-density populations, agricultural run-off, and/or biotoxin-producing algae. Research projects are ongoing in New York, Hawaii, Mexico, Uruguay, and Argentina.

These diseases are a huge threat to biodiversity. Over the past few decades a growing number of diseases that jump between species - including wildlife, domesticated animals, and humans - has escalated significantly. The lethal hantavirus of the American southwest moves from rodents to people. More recently, the avian influenza virus has broken all epidemiological rules by jumping from chickens straight to humans, claiming the world's attention as a potential pandemic. What is often overlooked in discussion of the health consequences to humans is that critically endangered wildlife species are at grave risk of extinction from disease outbreaks.

Wildlife Trust scientists monitor these wildlife populations and sites:

• California sea lions, sea turtles, and brown pelicans in the Islas del Golfo de California;
• Migratory waterfowl and highly pathogenic avian influenza in 28 priority wetlands; and
• Sea turtles in Hawaii, New York, and Mexico

Publications