"The H5N1 bird flu virus that devastated South American elephant seal populations has been confirmed in seals at California's Año Nuevo State Park, researchers from UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz announced Wednesday.
The virus has ravaged wild, commercial and domestic animals across the globe and was found last week in seven weaned pups. The confirmation came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa.
“This is exceptionally rapid detection of an outbreak in free-ranging marine mammals,” said Professor Christine Johnson, director of the Institute for Pandemic Insights at UC Davis’ Weill School of Veterinary Medicine. “We have most likely identified the very first cases here because of coordinated teams that have been on high alert with active surveillance for this disease for some time.”
Since last week, when researchers began noticing neurological and respoiratory signs of the disease in some animals, 30 seals have died, said Roxanne Beltran, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. Twenty-nine were weaned pups and the other was an adult male. The team has so far confirmed the virus in only seven of the dead pups."
Susanne Rust reports for the Los Angeles Times February 25, 2026.
