Emerg Infect Dis. 2009 Jun; [Epub ahead of print] Phocine Distemper Virus in Northern Sea Otters in the Pacific Ocean, Alaska, USA

• Main Authors: Tracey Goldstein, Jonna A. K. Mazet, Verena A. Gill, Angela M. Doroff, Kathy A. Burek, John A. Hammond
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Canada; Pacific; harbor seal; Phoca vitulina; Alaska; Callorhinus ursinus; Northern fur seal
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.218.7071; http://www.cdc.gov/eid/content/15/6/pdfs/09-0056.pdf

Phocine distemper virus (PDV) has caused 2 harbor seal epidemics in the Atlantic Ocean, but had never been identified in any Pacific Ocean species. We found that northern sea otters in Alaska are infected with PDV, which has created a disease threat to several sympatric and decreasing Pacific marine mammals. In northern Europe, phocine distemper virus (PDV) caused 2 epidemics that resulted in 23,000 harbor seal deaths in 1998 and>30,000 deaths in 2002 (1). PDV has also been associated with seal deaths on the eastern coast of the United States and Canada, which shows the persistent threat of this virus to Atlantic marine mammal populations (2). Serologic surveys before 2000 indicated that Pacific marine mammals had not been exposed to PDV (3,4), and this virus had never been identified as the cause of illness or death in the North Pacific Ocean. In this region, specifically in Alaska, northern sea otters (Enhydra lutris kenyoni) are one of many species that have had population decreases since the 1980s. Steller sea lion (Eumetopias jubatus), northern fur seal (Callorhinus ursinus), and most recently, harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) populations have all decreased (4–6). Page 0 of 8The Study In 2004 and 2005, strong serologic evidence of exposure to a PDV-like morbillivirus was obtained by serum neutralization for ≈40 % (30/77) of live captured sea otters sampled in the