Hundreds of seabirds that washed up dead on a Bering Sea island perished from avian cholera, a highly contagious and fast-killing waterfowl infection that had never been detected in Alaska before, according to state wildlife officials.
Strains of the bacterial disease generally do not pose a health risk for people, said Kimberlee Beckmen, a veterinarian at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. But residents of St. Lawrence Island, where the birds were found last month, should take care not to eat sick animals. People also should not handle the birds if they have cuts on their hands.
"It is always advisable to cook meat thoroughly and never eat sick birds or animals that may have died from a disease," she said in a statement. "Anyone touching a sick animal should wear gloves and wash hands with soap and water after handling animals or butchering meat."
Lethal bacteria
Residents of St. Lawrence Island who collected the carcasses and sent them off for study late last month suspected that recent Bering Sea storms killed the birds. Others feared it was seaborne nuclear radiation from the Fukushima meltdown in Japan.
Instead, blame Pasteurella multocida, the bacteria responsible for avian cholera. The infection can be quickly lethal, killing birds within 24 hours. It's caused big die-offs of waterfowl around the world, and is one of the most common poultry diseases, a Fish and Game statement said.
The good news is that outbreaks are typically localized and end within a few weeks.
Beckmen said the disease was rapidly detected because residents of Gambell and Savoonga, the two Alaska Native villages on the island 700 miles northwest of Anchorage, quickly reported the deaths and sent specimens off for study.
Biologists Gay Sheffield, with the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Marine Advisory Program in Nome, received a thick-billed murre, a northern fulmar and a crested auklet. The birds were necropsied at the U.S. Geological Service National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis.
The results came back Wednesday.
55-foot whale helps boost food supply
Villagers on St. Lawrence, already suffering from a diminished walrus supply that led to a disaster declaration by Gov. Sean Parnell, also hunt waterfowl for food. To prevent avian cholera from spreading -- dead birds are still very contagious -- state health regulators have asked local residents to dispose of the birds in empty fuel drums that are vented, and allow the carcasses to decompose.
Mother Nature has destroyed most of the carcasses near Savoonga, with foxes and gulls digging through ice for meals, said Mitchell Kiyuklook, president of the tribal government on Savoonga. People often eat murres this time of year, hanging them to dry and later boiling them to eat.
The tribe has issued broadcasts on the VHF radio warning people not to eat the dead birds, which seem to have stopped washing ashore. People aren't expecting the die-offs to hurt food supplies, he said. One bright spot is the village recently landed a 55-foot whale. That should help bolster dwindling food supplies, he said.
"A lot of people are happy right now," he said.
Though avian cholera has never been reported in Alaska, an outbreak involving common eiders and snow geese occurred in Canada in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.
Beckmen said avian cholera, which is unrelated to human cholera, has probably been in Alaska for eons, quietly causing die-offs in birds when large number of waterfowl congregate, she said. But those die-offs were probably never noticed and the bacteria went undetected.
"It was the right place, right time," she said. "The villages sent off fresh carcasses, they got right to the lab and we got a diagnosis hands down. That's the most exciting part about this. It's unusual to get a diagnosis so fast.
In contrast, the hunt for what has killed and sickened scores of Alaska seals since 2011 continues, with a team of international scientists unable to determine a cause so far.
Kiyuklook said islanders have seen such die-offs before, and those may have also been from avian cholera.
"It's happened many times," Kiyuklook said. "This is first time we send it and get them analyzed."
Contact Alex DeMarban at alex(at)alaskadispatch.com