Government of the Irkutsk Region: seals continue to die on Lake Baikal

For some unknown reason, seals continue to die on Lake Baikal. Since October 29, 141 carcasses have been discovered on the coast, four of them on November 2.

As Interfax reports with reference to the press service of the government of the Irkutsk region, the dead animals were adults and well-fed. The vast majority are pregnant females. This refutes the earlier assumption that famine was the cause of the mass death.

Laboratory studies have not yet shown why seals die. But it has already been established that the animals did not have any viruses or parasites dangerous to humans.

UPD. At a meeting on November 3, an interdepartmental commission in Irkutsk decided to test the fish that seals feed on for hazardous substances, infections and parasites. In places where the animals died, batches of golomyanka and Baikal goby will be caught - they are the main type of food for the Baikal seal.

The commission also sent a request to the East Siberian Railway and the Federal State Budgetary Institution “Zapovednoye Pribaikalye” to dispose of the carcasses. The registration of dead seals will be carried out by the territorial department of Rosrybolovstvo.

Since October 26, 132 carcasses of dead seals have been discovered on the coast of Lake Baikal: 38 in the Slyudyansky district of the Irkutsk region, the rest in the Kabansky district of Buryatia. The geography is gradually expanding - on November 2, dead seals were found in the Barguzin region of the republic.

The environmental prosecutor's office said that the animals died in the water, and then their bodies were washed ashore by the waves. A version is being considered that death occurred as a result of cardiac arrest.

Even before it became known that seals did not have diseases dangerous to humans, local residents began to take animal carcasses for their skins, meat and valuable fat. There was a threat of emergency. The West Baikal environmental prosecutor demanded not to touch the dead animals, since their remains still pose an environmental hazard. Research into the causes of animal death continues.