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Friday, August 29, 2025

Beached whale died from parasite

by

Radhica De Silva
2022 days ago
20200214

A necrop­sy done on the car­cass of a dead whale which beached it­self in Moru­ga ear­li­er this week has found that it died from se­vere par­a­sitic menin­gi­tis.

The Trinidad & To­ba­go Ma­rine Mam­mal Strand­ing Net­work (TTMM­SN) is­sued a state­ment on the lat­est find­ings af­ter a list of ques­tions was sent to TTMM­SN Co­or­di­na­tor Dr Car­la Phillips Sav­age en­quir­ing about the pos­si­ble caus­es of the whale’s death.

This week a to­tal of five whales beached - four in Moru­ga and one in Mara­cas Bay. On­ly one sur­vived and re­turned to sea.

Pro­fes­sor Phillips-Sav­age and vet­eri­nary pathol­o­gist Dr Rod Suepaul who are lec­tur­ers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, School of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine con­duct­ed the necrop­sy on one of the whales on Fri­day and found that the strand­ed mam­mal was “un­able to main­tain its equi­lib­ri­um on re­flota­tion as a re­sult of a se­vere par­a­sitic menin­gi­tis af­fect­ing mul­ti­ple ar­eas of the an­i­mal’s cere­bel­lum (the por­tion of the brain re­spon­si­ble for pos­ture, bal­ance, mo­tor con­trol and co­or­di­na­tion).”

The TTMM­SN said, “ Sig­nif­i­cant par­a­sitism was al­so ob­served to be as­so­ci­at­ed with the uro­gen­i­tal tract, where nu­mer­ous large par­a­sitic cysts were found in to be at­tached to the re­pro­duc­tive or­gans. The an­i­mal al­so had mul­ti­ple stom­ach ul­cers and nu­mer­ous par­a­sitic nod­ules of vary­ing sizes through­out the stom­ach wall. No food was present in the stom­ach or in­testines. Sam­ples of mul­ti­ple or­gans were tak­en for fur­ther analy­sis, in­clud­ing, brain, kid­ney, liv­er, spleen, re­pro­duc­tive or­gans, acoustic fat, blub­ber, mus­cle, lung, heart, among oth­ers.”

The net­work added ma­rine mam­mals that wash ashore, es­pe­cial­ly those that wash ashore singly, are typ­i­cal­ly ill and may be har­bour­ing in­fec­tious or­gan­isms that may have the po­ten­tial to be detri­men­tal to hu­mans and oth­er an­i­mals.

Urg­ing the pub­lic to avoid han­dling and or con­sum­ing ma­rine mam­mals that wash ashore, the TTMM­SN said this pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic health risk.

Mean­while, act­ing di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs Ra­han­na Ju­man said the IMA had not done any re­search in­to the cause fo the whale beach­ing, not­ing that the IMA will be work­ing in con­junc­tion with the Wildlife Sec­tion, the TTMM­SN and oth­er agen­cies.

“Once called up­on, we will as­sist,” she said.

How­ev­er gen­er­al sec­re­tary of Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea Gary Aboud said lo­cal sci­en­tists should con­sid­er all pos­si­ble fac­tors that could con­tribute to fre­quent beach­ing of whales and dol­phins.

“One fac­tor is there is a se­ries of seis­mic sur­veys that cur­rent­ly oc­cur in Guyana and we have asked these sci­en­tists to con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty of this as a pos­si­ble con­trib­u­to­ry fac­tor to these beach­ings in Moru­ga. Be­tween Venezuela and Guyana we have more than 1,000 kilo­me­tres of coast­line and what we are see­ing in Trinidad may just be the tip of the beach­ings that may be im­pact­ed by seis­mic sur­veys,” Aboud said.

He rec­om­mend­ed that groups like the TTMM­SN lob­by gov­ern­ment to en­sure that the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty re­quest En­vi­ron­men­tal Im­pact As­sess­ments for seis­mic sur­veys.

“Cur­rent­ly we don’t know the im­pact of a seis­mic sur­vey on the fish­eries and ma­rine species. There is a tremen­dous amount of sci­ence that says seis­mic sur­vey de­stroy the nav­i­ga­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty of the ma­rine mam­mals and there are two stud­ies which show that they kill the mi­croor­gan­isms from with­in a 1.2-kilo­me­tre ra­dius,” Aboud said.

He not­ed that Cari­com should have uni­fied en­vi­ron­men­tal leg­is­la­tion.

“Seis­mic sur­veys in Guyana or Venezuela have a trans­bound­ary im­pact so we must have a uni­fied ap­proach to the ma­rine eco-sys­tem,” he added.


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