(Beth Clifton collage)Cape Town rabies outbreak makes global headlines, while the Namibian killing does not even make local news
CAPE TOWN, South Africa; WINDHOEK, Namibia––The annual Namibian government-authorized massacre of as many as 86,000 fur seals at the Cape Cross and Luderitz seal reserves along the Skeleton Coast started on July 1, 2024 to scant international and even local notice.
The killing is to continue until November 15, 2024.
Yet much of the world is in a dither because 11 fur seals have washed up dead from rabies on beaches near Cape Town, South Africa since May 22, 2024.
This is 1,500 kilometers or about 900 miles south of Namibian seal hunt, where intensive Namibian government efforts ensure that the killing goes on each year in near-secrecy.
(Beth Clifton collage)Skeleton Coast
The Skeleton Coast has been called the Skeleton Coast for more than 500 years because of the many bones left there by whalers and sealers. The Namibian government would prefer that the world not recognize that market hunters are still making bones there.
The difference in global recognition of the catastrophes befalling fur seals in Namibia and near Cape Town reflects not only the Namibian government penchant for secrecy, however, but also that Cape Town annually attracts as many as 4.3 million international visitors.
This is about 10 times as many people as visit anywhere in Namibia, where tourism is dominated by trophy hunting, and is about 20 times as many people as pay for pricy access to the Cape Cross and Luderitz seal reserves, under security escort.
The estimated 210,000 seals whelping at Cape Cross alone easily outnumber the tourists.
Brown fur seal. (Wikipedia photo)“Stay well away”
Fur seals are by contrast relatively easily and inexpensively visible on Cape Town-area beaches. Everyone sees them, if only at a distance––usually.
“The City of Cape Town is cautioning the public to stay well away from the cute-looking seagoing creatures, following a first confirmed case of seal rabies,” Ray Leathern of The South African reported on June 8, 2024, soon after the May 22, 2024 first known fur seal rabies death was confirmed by fluoroscopic examination of brain tissue.
“Under no circumstances should people allow their dogs close to these animals either,” Leathern continued. “Authorities advise this precaution applies to the entire Cape Peninsula coastline, and not just the Atlantic Ocean side,” a long day’s drive directly south of the Skeleton Coast, “where the case of seal rabies was identified.”
(Beth Clifton collage)Buried close to 200 dead seals in a day
Added Leathern, “A case of rabies in a pet dog was confirmed in the Southern Peninsula of Cape Town on May 31, 2024. “The dog exhibited fever and increased aggression but was humanely euthanized.”
Warning against panic, officials also reminded the public that seal deaths in the area occur for many different reasons. “In November 2021,” mentioned Nimi Princewill of CNN, `“Western Cape provincial officials said they buried close to 200 dead seals in a single day after their carcasses washed ashore from suspected malnutrition,” a consequence of global warming and overfishing.
Retrospective investigation found that the earliest confirmed rabies case in Cape Town-area fur seals was identified in October 2023, meaning that rabies may have been circulating among fur seals since before the peak of the 2023 whelping season, in November and December.
(Beth Clifton photo)Conflict with rabid dogs
Rabies among fur seals is most likely to originate from conflict on beaches with rabid dogs, and is much more likely to result from separate dog-to-seal transmissions than from seal-to-seal transmission.
Canine rabies, though now relatively rare in South Africa, still occurs often enough to have killed three children during the first quarter of 2024, two of them in the Amathole district (Amathole was formerly called Port Elizabeth) on the Eastern Cape.
Observed Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases zoonotic disease moderator Pablo Beldomenico, “The first case of rabies in a marine mammal probably was a report of a rabid ring seal in the Arctic. It was suggested that this seal was bitten by a rabid Arctic fox. Since then, reports of rabies in pinnipeds (seals and sea lions) have been rare, and are considered accidental spillovers without further transmission.
(Cape of Good Hope SPCA photo)Are humans in danger?
“In South Africa,” Beldomenico said, “two major variants of rabies virus circulate. The canid variant is found infecting domestic dogs, black-backed jackals, and bat-eared foxes. The mongoose variant circulates in several [mongoose] species scattered over the central plateau of the country,” well away from fur seal habitat.
Most mainstream news coverage and blog posting about the rabies outbreak among Cape Town fur seals has focused on the relatively remote questions as to whether humans and/or the fur seal population are in danger.
Indeed, instances of fur seals nipping humans who get too close to them and their pups are frequent, and such a bite could transmit rabies if the biting seal happened to be rabid.
Likewise, a rabid seal biting another seal could transmit rabies.
Opossum. (Beth Clifton photo)Understanding rabies
But the question of greater relevance is not whether seals can transmit rabies if actively rabid. Almost all mammals can, though marsupials such as opossums have vastly higher resistance and are not known to become rabid in the wild.
Most rabid animals, however, can only transmit rabies while in the terminal “furious” frothing-at-the-mouth final phase of infection, when they are so ill as to have little opportunity to infect others,
The more serious question about any discovery of rabies in an unfamiliar host is whether the species can incubate rabies for long in a transmissible state.
(Beth Clifton collage)The order carnivora
Only a handful of species are known to be able to do this: bats, dogs (including coyotes and jackals), foxes, skunks, raccoons, mongooses, and Asian ferret badgers.
All except bats, the original host order, are members of the order carnivora, as are fur seals. In theory, therefore, fur seals could evolve an endemic and easily transmissible rabies strain.
However, there are 279 known members of the order carnivora. More than 270 of them are not known to be rabies carriers, despite having occasionally become infected and sometimes even harmed humans when in the “furious” phase, for example horses and cattle.
(Wikipedia photo)No evidence of rabies among seals in Namibia
Meanwhile, the imminent threat to the fur seal population is the killing underway in Namibia.
“There is no clinical evidence of rabies in seals in Namibia yet,” offered Ocean Conservation Namibia, a subsidiary of the U.S. organization Ocean Conservation International.
“The development is so new, nobody even started to run tests,” the Ocean Conservation Namibia continued. “There are capable facilities in Namibia and a rabies protocol is in place should suspicious cases be reported.
“We take the possibility of a rabies outbreak seriously,” Ocean Conservation Namibia emphasized. “All our Ocean Conservation Namibia rescuers have been vaccinated against rabies in the past week.
Fishing net. (Beth Clifton photo)Seal rescuers
“We will continue to rescue seals from plastic entanglement for as long as it is deemed safe,” Ocean Conservation Namibia pledged. “We have rescued over 300 seals for the year.
“All Ocean Conservation Namibia rescuers have been bitten before, but those bites occurred in a setting where seals felt threatened. None of those seals displayed signs of rabies or seemed unusually aggressive.”
The Cape Town outbreak, however, “highlights the potential for rabies cases along the entire coastline where seals are present. Cape fur seals travel freely between South Africa and Namibia,” Ocean Conservation Namibia pointed out.
(Wikipedia photo)“Only a matter of time”
Therefore, “It will only be a matter of time until rabies might be detected in Namibian seals. At this stage, we have more questions than answers,” Ocean Conservation Namibia said.
“We do not know how many seals are positive for rabies, where and when the first seal became infected, and how far the disease has spread.
“We also do not know if rabies is new to Cape fur seals. Nobody has run tests until now. It is possible that rabies has been part of Cape fur seal life all along,” Ocean Conservation Namibia finished.