photo credit: Frank Lanting for Beltran Lab/UC Santa Cruz
Elephant seals at Ano Nuevo State Park. 

Researchers from UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz this week confirmed elephant seal pups along the South Bay coast—at Año Nuevo State Park–have tested positive for bird flu.

The park typically attracts around five-thousand elephant seals during the winter breeding season. Researchers estimate about 1,350 seals were on the beach when the outbreak began. At least 30 pups have been infected. 

Professor Christine Johnson is the director of the Institute for Pandemic Insights at UC Davis' Vet School.

“This is the first detection of H5N1 in a marine mammal in California and the first confirmed detection in northern elephant seals,” Johnson said.

She says avian influenza has been rapidly spreading across the country in recent years infecting mainly birds and livestock.

"These trends and global trends in H5N1 outbreaks around the world, our teams, both at UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz increased disease surveillance at Año Nuevo and other locations in anticipation of a possible spillover into seals that we have been expecting for sometime now,” Johnson said.

While the risk to the general public remains very low, health officials warn that bird flu can spread between animals and people.

Because of the outbreak, California State Parks has closed public access to viewing areas and canceled its popular guided elephant seal tours for the remainder of the season.