An avian flu panzootic — a pandemic among animals — has struck some 320 bird and mammal species, including.
It felt like watching one of those blockbusters about the end of the world. Like witnessing an apocalypse, but in real life. Which, in a way, it was.
The beaches of Valdes Peninsula in Argentina, normally so packed with elephant seals that time of year it is impossible to stroll along the shore, were desolate except for hundreds of dark, rotting carcasses— nearly a whole season of seal pups dead, with gulls pecking at the remains.
Instead of the usual cacophony of guttural honks that drowns out the waves during breeding season, the eerie silence was only broken by the sound of a few remaining elephant seals shaking their heads, snot running down their protruding, namesake noses.
“You felt like a bomb had exploded,” saidMartín Méndez, recalling the scene he witnessed in October during an annual survey of southern elephant seals in that stretch of coastal Patagonia.
“It is catastrophic,” added the marine biologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society, a New York-based nonprofit group. “This is the largest die-off for the species, period.”
Altogether, an estimated 17,000 elephant seal pups seals died there last year from avian influenza, victims of an unprecedented panzootic — a pandemic among animals — that has struck around 320 types of birds and mammals.