The fur seal population in South Africa is currently seeing a spike in the rabies virus. Photo: Unsplash
Rabies is a hell of a disease. Once symptoms appear, there’s pretty much 100 percent chance that you’ll die. It can affect mammals of all sorts, and the latest outbreak is in the fur seal population in South Africa.
According to reports, nine fur seals have tested positive for the disease. It is the first time a significant outbreak has been seen in marine mammals, and surfers in South Africa are worried.
“I was out surfing the other day, when this seal popped up in the lineup [of surfers] to sun itself,” Gregg Oelofse, who is in charge of coastal management for Cape Town council, told The Guardian. “Usually, surfers would enjoy the interaction. But now everyone was paddling as fast as they could to get away.”
Rabies, as I mentioned, is a particularly nasty way to go. If treated before symptoms show up, it’s survivable. But since it has a relatively long incubation period — usually about 2-3 months — it’s easy to ignore that bat bite that appeared to have healed up just fine.
“Initial symptoms of rabies include generic signs like fever, pain and unusual or unexplained tingling, pricking, or burning sensations at the wound site,” the World Health Organization (WHO) wrote. “As the virus moves to the central nervous system, progressive and fatal inflammation of the brain and spinal cord develops. Clinical rabies in people can be managed but very rarely cured, and not without severe neurological deficits.”
There are two different kinds of rabies. The first and most common is called Furious rabies. Symptoms from it include “hyperactivity, excitable behaviour, hallucinations, lack of coordination, hydrophobia (fear of water) and aerophobia (fear of drafts or of fresh air).” Death generally occurs within a few days of the appearance of symptoms. The second kind, which accounts for about 20 percent of cases in humans, is a little less dramatic, but still terrifying.
“Muscles gradually become paralyzed, starting from the wound site,” the WHO continued. “A coma slowly develops and eventually death occurs. The paralytic form of rabies is often misdiagnosed, contributing to the under-reporting of the disease.”
In June, one seal in South Africa bit several surfers in just a few minutes. Later on, a seal beached itself with terrible facial injuries that “could only have been inflicted by a seriously aggressive animal.”
Those events caused authorities to kill four fur seals and test their bodies for the presence of the rabies virus. Three of the four tested positive, and in the following days and weeks, five more were found to have the virus.
Scientists believe that the rabies outbreak in South African seal populations my have started in 2021, when researchers at the University of Pretoria noticed a spike in seal attacks on humans. While rabies is present in animals in the area (most notably in jackals), most of them live far from humans and don’t pose much of a threat.
The University of Pretoria scientists partnered up with Sea Search, a local research organization, and the SPCA to find out as much as they could about the cause behind the uptick in seal attacks. Rabies was, of course, considered, but given that fact that up until now, only one case of a seal infected with rabies has been recorded. That was in Norway in 1980, so they put the theory on the back burner.
Sea Search has kept 120 brains of fur seals on ice that they’ve collected over the last three-or-so-years, so researchers are able to test them. The hope is that, once they’ve tested enough, they can get a handle on when rabies first appeared in the seal populations, and how far it might have spread since.
Now, surfers and swimmers in Cape Town are warned to get the rabies vaccine immediately if they’re bitten. Authorities do suspect that many people have already been bitten by rabid seals, but for some reason none of them have seen the virus transfer over.
“We think quite a few people have been bitten by rabid seals, but luckily no human has got infected yet,” Oelofse said. “We don’t know why. Perhaps the transfer rate is low? Does salt water in their mouth reduce the viral load?”
That particular stretch of South African coastline is home to about 2 million fur seals. They spend weeks at sea sometimes, covering enormous distances and only coming ashore infrequently to give their bodies a rest or to mate. Since they live in colonies and are in close quarters, researchers are worried that rabies might be more common than they know.
If that’s the case, it brings another worry to mind: that the rabies in the seal populations could spread to other mammals, like otters. Lifeguards have been instructed to shut the beaches down if an aggressive seal is observed, and dog owners are being encouraged to keep their dogs leashed.
“We’re also super-worried about what it might mean for our seals,” Oelofse finished. “And we really don’t want any humans to get rabies.”
