A common dolphin found dead on the beach at Encounter Bay in recent days has been confirmed as South Australia’s latest victim of H5 avian influenza. The bay sits on the Fleurieu Peninsula, a popular stretch of coast south of Adelaide, and the animal is not the first dolphin in the state to be found carrying the virus.
Skye Fruean, the state’s chief vet, described the infection as bad luck for the animal: in her view it most likely crossed paths with an infected bird living in the wild. She sees little chance of the disease sweeping through dolphin pods. The bigger worry, she said, is for seals and sea lions, which haul out on land and share beaches with flocks of seabirds.
The new case takes the state’s tally to 340 “events”. The term is easy to misread: each one stands for a lab-confirmed infection in one or more animals of the same species at the same location, not a single dead creature. Authorities now regard the virus as permanently established among South Australian wildlife, although positive results are arriving less often than earlier in the outbreak and there have been no recent mass die-offs. Greater crested terns have taken the heaviest hit so far.
Vaccination is the next line of defence. Some birds at the Cleland Wildlife Park near Adelaide are already immunised, and the programme at Zoos SA sites is roughly halfway done. Federal authorities have released doses for wild little penguins, and teams are getting ready to vaccinate three colonies: Granite Island, Penneshaw and Emu Bay. Fruean said she could not yet say when those jabs would start.
