Whale and dolphin stranding is being investigated to discover what part disease plays in this phenomenon.Dr Pádraig Duignan, a specialist in the health and diseases of marine mammals at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Veterinary Science, is trying to discover why some whales and dolphins become stranded on beaches and why, despite best efforts to save them, they often do so repeatedly until they die.
Dr Duignan says stranding of dolphins is a perennial question that has intrigued naturalists for centuries and is an enigma which years of research have failed to resolve.
Duignan joined University of Melbourne after a 20-year career that has taken him across the globe, studying the health of seals, sea lions, dolphins and whales.
His project is conducted in collaboration with colleagues at Zoos Victoria, Monash and Deakin Universities, the Dolphin Research Institute, the Australian Animal Health Laboratory, and the departments of Primary Industries and Sustainability and Environment.
“The project will study the effects of infectious diseases and pollutants on stranding, mortality rates, survival rates and reproduction. An important component of the research is the prevalence of viral and bacterial infections in fur seals and dolphins, which have been shown to significantly decrease reproduction or cause severe and often deadly secondary infections,” says Dr Duignan.
“With climate change projected to dramatically alter the environment of our marine mammals, potentially dramatically changing their exposure to disease, these animals will need all the help they can get.”
Recently, two bottlenose dolphins, the species frequently seen in Port Philip Bay, were brought to Dr Duignan for examination after repeated strandings at Apollo Bay and Portland.
One was found to have died from a severe pneumonia which Dr Duignan believes may have been caused by a virus. Viral pneumonia has not previously been seen in Australian dolphins, and if Dr Duignan's initial results are confirmed, the finding may bode poorly for Victorian dolphin populations.
In the US, viral epidemics have had a devastating effect on bottlenose dolphin populations along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, and similar epidemic in Victoria could hit the bottlenose dolphin population of Port Philip and Gippsland equally hard.
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