At least 289 dead seals have washed up onto the shore of the Caspian Sea in southwestern Kazakhstan over the past week, Kazakh news website Lada.kz reported on Tuesday, citing marine biologists carrying out research in the region.
The endangered Caspian seals, which are found exclusively in the Caspian Sea, were discovered between 24 and 29 October in Kazakhstan’s Mangystau region.
Zhazira Sydykova of the Institute of Hydrobiology and Ecology in Almaty told Lada.kz that biological samples had been taken from the animals “to determine their age and causes of death”, which she said could only be determined after carrying out laboratory tests.
Sydykova said that the institute had been studying the Caspian Sea coast since the end of September, inspecting the shore on a daily basis, observing the water and looking for dead Caspian seals, which she said had been found both on land and in the water.
Caspian seal researcher Assel Baimukanova said in an Instagram post that some of the dead seals showed signs of physical damage and that pregnant females had been among the dead, adding that ecologists and chemists would need to be brought in to establish the exact cause of death.
Kazakhstan’s Deputy Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Zhomart Aliyev did not rule out that some of the seals may have died after becoming entangled in fishing nets. This is the second mass death of Caspian seals this year, with dead seals also washing up on Kazakhstan’s Caspian shore in March.
The Kazakh Fisheries Committee said that the seal carcasses had been in a decomposed state when they were found in March, suggesting that the animals had died during the winter and their bodies had subsequently been washed ashore during a storm.
While Caspian seals were thought to number 1.5 million a century ago, a 2022 estimate by the Caspian Environmental Protection Centre put their population at just 70,000, with the decline primarily due to human influence, climate change, and pollution.