Marine mammal carcasses: research, health and legal considerations - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Marine mammal carcasses:

research, health and legal considerations

www.strandings.org www.scottishentanglement.org

• Operational since 1992
• Part of the Cetacean Strandings

Investigation Programme (CSIP)

• Funded by Scottish and Westminster govt
• Team of four based in Inverness

Aims:

• To collate, analyse and report data for

marine strandings (8500 strandings records, 22 species)

• To determine the cause of death in

stranded animals (2000+ necropsies)

• To undertake surveillance in order to

identify any substantial new threats to their conservation status

Who?

Why?

• Assess health and ecology of species – how it lived and why it died
• Insight into wider metrics e.g. age structure, reproductive patterns and diet
• Provide baseline data to detect and assess trends and patterns in strandings,

disease outbreaks, unusual mortality events, environmental and anthropogenic stressors plus potential conservation issues

• Contributes to assessment of and for specific conservation measures

SMASS volunteer network

• ~ 200 trained volunteers
• Where immediate collection of carcasses for necropsy

examination is not possible, volunteers collect photographs, morphometrics and tissue samples.

• Help from trained volunteers is invaluable but safety is
• paramount. There are risks which must be taken

seriously…

What we need to know

• 2 levels

– Level 1: essential

– Where – When – What

– Level 2: additional

– Size – Condition – Sex – COD indicators – Access

Photographs!

Risks

• Location hazards

– Tide, daylight, sand/mud, loose rocks, bad weather, exposure, getting lost, getting stuck, getting to the site, other beachgoers and their dog…

Risks

• Sampling hazards

– Stab injury, slicing injury, puncture injury – Teeth, bone fragments, knives – Infectious disease: Inhalation, skin contact

• Seal finger
• Brucella spp
• Salmonella
• as yet unknown zoonosis…

Questions the SMASS team have been asked….

– Are you going to eat that? – Can I eat it? – Oh it’s so pretty, can I pet it? – Why are you killing that animal? – Can you get rid of it? – Can I take a bit as a souvenir?

Species protection:

– 1979: Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (Bonn Convention) – 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act – 1992: Annex IV of the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) – 1992: Annex II (designation of Special Areas of Conservation) – 1991: Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic and North Seas (ASCOBANS), – 2004: Nature Conservation (Scotland) Act – 2010: Marine Scotland Act

Legal considerations

Legal considerations