Infectious diseases of Antarctic seals with potential population, zoonotic and quarantine significance

Project aim

This project builds on previous work with disease in Weddell seals and further investigates bacterial diseases such as zoonotic marine mammal Brucellosis, and seal viral diseases including Phocine Distemper Virus (responsible elsewhere for fatal epidemics) that were identied in that study. It extends this work to other Antarctic seals and will examine evidence for involvement of disease in the decline of southern elephant seals on Maquarie Island. It aims to build an understanding of the ecology of infectious diseases of seals in the Antarctic and to provide the capacity to examine the effect of human impacts and climate change.