Results of a community based disease monitoring program of marine mammals in arctic Canada

It is the right of Canadian Inuit to hunt marine mammals for subsistence. Most of this food is consumed raw, yet it under goes no formal government inspection or certification. Hunters also encounter sick or abnormal animals and they are becoming increasingly concerned about the wholesomeness of the food that they eat. They are also concerned about epizootics that may severely limit the number of animals that are available for their use. As a result, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has been asked by Inuit wildlife management groups to determine what possible disease threats are present in the marine mammal populations of Arctic Canada. Two separate DFO surveillance projects have been operational since the mid 1990 to address those concerns. The first uses tissue samples supplied from hunter-killed and presumably healthy animals while the second encourages hunters to submit tissue samples from animals that appear either sick or abnormal or that are found dead. Both programs rely on the cooperation of a number of specialists and the results of these investigations have provided a rare insight to the role that infectious diseases are having on the overall health of marine mammals in Arctic Canada. Specifically, serological evidence of significant viral and bacterial pathogens including distemper, influenza A, herpes and Brucellosis has been obtained from the apparently healthy animals while patterns of natural mortality are emerging from the systematic testing of the sick/abnormal submissions. Of special concern is the role that infectious diseases such as Brucellosis may be having on stocks of animals that are classed as endangered. Brucellosis in these animals may proceed as a steady decline in numbers over time while the introduction of a highly pathogenic viral disease such as distemper into a population of immunologically naive animals may be immediately catastrophic