AN Irish scientific team is participating in international research into the mysterious deaths of endangered monk seals.
More than 60 of the seals have been found dead in recent weeks out of a total worldwide population of only 350. Four baby monk seals were rescued and are being treated in the centre's aquarium in the port of Nouadhibou, on Mauritania's Atlantic coast.
Tissue samples from the seals, which were washed up last month, near Nouadhibou, are being studied by a team led by Dr Seamus Kennedy, veterinary pathologist at the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture in Belfast.
Dr Kennedy is known internationally for his research work on marine mammals since the outbreak of the morbilli virus among European seals in 1987-88.
It was initially thought that the monk seals had been poisoned by eating fish which had swallowed toxic algae. The Mauritanian, Spanish, Dutch and Irish research group has now ruled out this theory.
However, Dr Kennedy said yesterday that there was no evidence of a virus either from tissue studied so far. Plans to vaccinate the rare seals could prove difficult, due to the isolated nature of their habitat, often in tide-bound caves.
So called because folds of skin around their necks recall monastic dress, monk seals are among the last members of the seal family living in temperate waters in the northern hemisphere.
Dr Kennedy's team has been involved in four major international research projects, since working on the epidemic which killed at least 17,000 seals in northern Europe - including these waters -in 1987-88.
Apart from the monk seals, Dr Kennedy has also been consulted about marine mammal deaths in the Caspian Sea. Though the subject is controversial, he does not believe that pollution of the environment is a major factor in these outbreaks.
"The morbilli virus is highly pathogenic, and when a population builds up to a certain level, it breaks out," he told The Irish Times. "It tends to have the effect of population control, though there is no evidence that nature designed it as such."
Dead seals washed up on Tory island in Co Donegal a couple of months ago are believed to have died of starvation. Some of the seals were transported ashore by the Air Corps for research, as it was initially thought that the deaths might be pollution-related.
