‘Everybody was paddling to get away’: seals with rabies alarm South Africa’s surfers

It’s occurred to me dozens of occasions: I’m using a wave when, out of the nook of my eye, I see a black form arising beneath me. Being in Cape City – a fantastic white shark hotspot – it’s laborious to not assume the worst. However worry quickly provides into aid when it turns into clear that I’m sharing the wave with a Cape fur seal. Typically, they get so shut you’ll be able to see the bubbles on their whiskers.

Now, 9 seals have examined constructive for rabies – the world’s first important outbreak of the illness in marine mammals – and other people like me are watching the water alongside this 400-mile (600km) shoreline for a distinct purpose.

“I used to be out browsing the opposite day, when this seal popped up within the lineup [of surfers] to solar itself,” says Gregg Oelofse, who’s answerable for coastal administration for Cape City council. “Often, surfers would benefit from the interplay. However now everybody was paddling as quick as they might to get away.”

Final month, a single seal bit a number of surfers in a matter of minutes and one other seal swam ashore with horrific facial accidents that would solely have been inflicted by a severely aggressive animal. These assaults satisfied authorities to euthanise 4 animals and ship their our bodies to be examined for rabies.

Three of these 4 seals examined constructive, and the variety of circumstances has since risen to 9.

Scientists from the College of Pretoria are sequencing the virus to find out the place and when rabies entered the seal inhabitants. Rabies is endemic amongst many wild animals in southern Africa (jackals, for instance) however most of those animals don’t stay near people.

Seal behaviour began to alter a number of years in the past. Oelofse and his crew observed a marked enhance in seal aggression in Cape City in late 2021, after intermittent experiences of seals attacking people.

To grasp this extremely uncommon behaviour, they joined up with marine scientists from a neighborhood analysis organisation, Sea Search, and an animal welfare organisation, the SPCA, to catch animals and take a look at them.

They thought-about rabies as a potential trigger, however the truth that there had solely ever been one recorded case of a seal contracting rabies – in Norway’s Svalbard islands in 1980 – recommended this was most unlikely.

Oelofse stresses that the rising variety of circumstances is just not an indication of the outbreak rising exponentially. “We’re retrospectively testing euthanised animals,” he says. “We’re very lucky that Sea Search has sampled and stored 120 brains during the last two and a half years.”

Testing these brains will enable them to get a greater image of when rabies first appeared within the inhabitants and the way far it has unfold. They’ll proceed to check any animals that they believe of getting rabies.

On Cape City’s shoreline, swimmers and surfers like me are being given a transparent message: anybody bitten by a seal, regardless of how way back, should search medical consideration instantly. Rabies can take wherever between per week and two years to incubate, with a number of months being the norm.

However the proof Oelofse has seen of experiences is reassuring. “We expect fairly a number of individuals have been bitten by rabid seals, however fortunately no human has bought contaminated but,” he says. “We don’t know why. Maybe the switch price is low? Does salt water of their mouth cut back the viral load?”

Two million Cape fur seals stay in colonies stretching from southern Angola to Algoa Bay on the east coast of South Africa, says Dr Greg Hofmeyr, a marine biologist who has been learning seals for 32 years. “They’ll spend days to weeks at sea, masking huge distances, and solely hauling out on to islands often to relaxation or to mate.”

When they’re on these offshore colonies, nonetheless, they stay in extraordinarily shut proximity, the place there are frequent fights. Rabies is primarily transmitted by means of saliva, so there’s a concern that the illness may unfold shortly amongst seals.

In the meantime, lifeguards and shark spotters have been instructed to shut seashores if an aggressive seal is noticed, and members of the general public are urged to report any uncommon seal behaviour, to at all times maintain their canines on leashes and to avoid seals in harbours which have turn out to be habituated to people.

Whereas panic and the urge to swim away from any seal quick is comprehensible, Oelofse says it’s not solely justified. “If a seal is behaving weirdly or aggressively, keep nicely away and report it to the authorities,” he says. “A relaxed seal is unlikely to pose a risk.”

The message appears to be getting by means of. I used to be out browsing yesterday when a seal joined us on the backline, rolling round on the floor like an outsized labrador. Nobody round me panicked and after some time the seal swam away from us.

There’s, Oelofse stresses, “no international ‘greatest apply’ to comply with”, so the authorities are taking a proactive strategy.

“We actually need to know the switch price [of the disease],” he says, expressing concern that rabies would possibly turn out to be endemic within the seal inhabitants or bounce to different coastal mammals comparable to Cape clawless otters.

“We’re additionally super-worried about what it’d imply for our seals,” he says. “And we actually don’t need any people to get rabies.”