Close contact between harbor seals and colonies of Eider ducks would have favored the contagion of the mammal right in its reproductive period.
“In the St. Lawrence estuary, the sites that are used for harbor seal whelping. Le Bic, Métis, for example the White Island, are also sites that are used by eiders that are infected, ”said the spokesperson for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Jean-François Gosselin.
For now, seals in the Gulf of St. Lawrence are not affected. Transmission from one individual to another is rather uncertain. But this scenario is a tangible possibility in the near future.
“That there is not necessarily evidence now, unless you talk to Stéphane Lair. It seems, according to him, perhaps that with the number that we observe, it could only be direct contact with birds, but it is not impossible that there may be transmissions between mammals, between seals by example,” said the spokesperson for Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
However, normally bird flu does not attack seals although it has happened in the past here and in Europe.
“There are several mortality events that have been reported over the past forty years in Europe and the northeastern United States. Then there is work that has been done on influenza in other seal species as well, which has shown either avian virus infections in seals or the presence of antibodies in seals. This shows that they were exposed to influenza,” says Mr. Gosselin.
For the moment H5N1 only attacks birds and harbor seals, but the possibility of seeing it spread to other marine species is not impossible. Once again the experts remain cautious, but they do not rule out this hypothesis.
“Currently, I have not heard that there has been a slaughter or anything in the species, but it is not entirely impossible”, says the professor emeritus in marine biology at ISMER from Rimouski, Emilien Pelletier.
The current H5N1 virus is not exclusive to Quebec, all of Europe is affected by this strain of the pathogen. In the French magazine Science Avenir, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds called the virus the worst outbreak of bird flu ever recorded. Everything suggests that with the migration period, the birds could infect their congeners in the south of the continent.