{"id":10841,"date":"2025-11-19T14:49:56","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T20:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=10841"},"modified":"2025-11-19T14:49:58","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T20:49:58","slug":"bird-flu-wiped-out-nearly-half-of-the-females-in-the-worlds-largest-elephant-seal-population-drone-images-suggest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/11\/19\/bird-flu-wiped-out-nearly-half-of-the-females-in-the-worlds-largest-elephant-seal-population-drone-images-suggest\/","title":{"rendered":"Bird Flu Wiped Out Nearly Half of the Females in the World\u2019s Largest Elephant Seal Population, Drone Images Suggest"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/smart-news\/bird-flu-wiped-out-nearly-half-of-the-females-in-the-worlds-largest-elephant-seal-population-drone-images-suggest-180987699\/\">Smithsonian Magazine<\/a> Scientists recorded a 47 percent drop in breeding females in South Georgia\u2019s three largest elephant seal colonies after bird flu hit. Scaled to the whole island, that\u2019s a potential loss of more than 50,000 of the animals. In 2023, bird flu reached a remote island in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Now,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/smart-news\/worlds-largest-iceberg-runs-aground-potentially-averting-a-collision-with-penguin-and-seal-breeding-areas-180986167\/\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"South Georgia, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">South Georgia<\/a>\u2014home to the world\u2019s largest southern elephant seal population\u2014has been transformed. Drone images of the island\u2019s three biggest seal colonies suggest the population of breeding females has dropped by 47 percent since the introduction of the H5N1 virus in 2023. The findings, which compared the seals\u2019 numbers in 2022 with those in 2024, were published in the journal&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s42003-025-09014-7\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Communications Biology, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Communications Biology<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;on November 13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt painted a starker picture than I was expecting,\u201d says lead author&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bas.ac.uk\/profile\/conord48\/\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"Connor Bamford, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Connor Bamford<\/a>, a marine ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey, to Emily Anthes at the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/11\/13\/science\/bird-flu-h5n1-elephant-seals.html\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"New York Times, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"nmq gRdSvsia  o VKnl S u CsX  mx\">nmq gRdSvsia  o VKnl S u CsX  mx<\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Smithsonian Magazine Scientists recorded a 47 percent drop in breeding females in South Georgia\u2019s three largest elephant seal colonies after bird flu hit. Scaled to the whole island, that\u2019s a potential loss of more than 50,000 of the animals. In 2023, bird flu reached a remote island in the southern Atlantic Ocean. Now,\u00a0South Georgia\u2014home to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-avian-influenza"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10841"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10842,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10841\/revisions\/10842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}