Home to nearly one million king penguins – half the world’s population – South Georgia had largely escaped the ravages of avian flu until now.
Despite the remoteness of this South Atlantic island, experts are still surprised it’s taken decades for the virus to infect the penguins living there.
They pack the beaches in their millions each breeding season in a spectacle of courting, mating and raising their young – a density perfect for the rapid spread of disease.
‘I liken South Georgia to the Alps with Serengeti-style wildlife around it’, Dr Norman Ratcliffe, a bird ecologist from the British Antarctic Survey, told BBC News.
‘The wildlife concentrations across the coast are simply phenomenal – a number of species of penguins, albatrosses, and seals.
“If chook flu have been to take a maintain and trigger very excessive mortality throughout the island, it will be of conservation concern globally.
‘But at the moment, it does seem to be somewhat limited in the way it’s spreading.’
The virus has been detected in 5 gentoo penguins and 5 king penguins, simply as this yr’s breeding season ends.
Macaronis and chinstraps additionally dwell on the island.
Its full affect received’t be seen till the penguins return to the British Overseas Territory for the following breeding season on the finish of this yr.
‘We don’t understand how simply the virus can get into completely different penguin species, what kind of scientific illness it would trigger and the way quickly it would unfold between birds themselves’, Dr Ashley Banyard instructed the BBC.
He leads the avian virology workgroup on the UK’s Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA), which examined the confirmed instances at its International Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza in Weybridge.
Penguins aren’t the primary species to fall sufferer to the virus on South Georgia.
It was first recognized within the island’s brown skua, giant scavenging seabirds, in October 2023, the BBC reported.
Soon after it was present in kelp gulls, and in January instances have been confirmed in elephant and fur seals.
The avian flu has additionally unfold to Antarctic terns and wandering albatrosses.
Bird flu, formally known as High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI), is within the midst of a worldwide surge.
The ongoing outbreak of the extremely contagious H5N1 pressure of the virus has ’brought on devastation in animal populations’, in keeping with the World Health Organisation.
It’s killed numerous wild and domesticated birds around the globe, and even not less than one polar bear in Alaska because it spreads to different species.
The outbreak additionally killed a nine-year-old boy who ate contaminated poultry in Cambodia, which has seen 5 fatalities this yr.
Although people normally solely catch chook flu from contaminated animals, the avian flu is a probable candidate for inflicting the following huge pandemic if it mutates to permit human-to-human transmission.
When it does infect people, it carries a mortality fee round 50%.
Researchers warn the virus is only a few mutations or a sudden gene swap away from being able to spread from human to human.
Dr Nicole Robb, an assistant professor at Warwick University and a lecturer at Oxford University lecturer, said: ‘To date, there have been no sustained cases of human-to-human transmission.
‘However, if it does happen it will be a serious situation.’
The more bird flu spreads, the more H5N1 has the chance to mutate.
Before reaching the penguins of South Georgia, it had already infected the gentoos 932 miles west on the Falklands, the BBC reported.
Experts consider skuas might have introduced chook flu to South Georgia and Antarctica.
Two lifeless skuas contaminated with chook flu have been not too long ago discovered by Argentine scientists close to their Primavera base in Antarctica.
Dr Ratcliffe mentioned: ‘Skuas winter round South America as do big petrels and we predict these birds are the vector that purchased the illness into South Georgia.
‘Skuas are always in amongst the penguin colonies, scavenging and preying on eggs and chicks.
‘If there’s a shock, it’s that it’s taken this lengthy for the virus to be manifested within the penguins.’
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