Bird Flu Pandemic Kills Thousands of Elephant Seals in South Atlantic

                                      Bird Flu Kills Thousands of Elephant Seals

Scientific Study.. Bird Flu Kills Thousands of Elephant Seals

Thousands of elephant seals in the South Atlantic have died from the recent bird flu pandemic.

According to a study published last week in the journal *Communications Biology*, the number of adult female elephant seals in the South Georgia archipelago may have halved between 2022 and 2024. 

The study's authors, including British marine biologist Connor Bamford, estimate, by extrapolating from the entire elephant seal population in the archipelago, that approximately 53,000 females will be missing in the upcoming breeding season.

South Georgia is located about 2,000 kilometers east of the southern tip of Argentina and is a key habitat for the southern elephant seal, according to the German Press Agency (dpa). Elephant seals are large marine mammals of the seal family, characterized by their large size and a nose that resembles an elephant's trunk.