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Source: ONE News -
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Researchers are alarmed at a big drop in the number of female New Zealand sealions breeding in the sub-antarctic islands this season.
Researcher Louise Chilvers says there should be many more of them.
"This season has been disastrous. We have had a 30% decrease in pup population just from this year," says Chilvers who has been visiting Enderby, one of the sub-antarctic islands, for the last eight years.
All the adults on the island have been tagged but this year many of them have not shown up.
"The species is a species where you come back and give birth where you were born, so given that these females should be coming back here cause it's the only place they know where to give birth, we don't know where else they would be," Chilvers says.
"I'm hoping very desperately that it's not another bacterial outbreak."
The sealions used to be all around New Zealand but are now the rarest of seals, and the deepest diving. Satellite monitoring shows the females will dive up to 600 metres for fish if they have to.
In the last 10 years vast numbers have been wiped out by three epidemics caused by bacterial infections and the implications of a possible fourth are a major concern.
"You're talking about a species that's already threatened...the flow on effect is quite dramatic," Chilvers says.
The danger is compounded by the number of sealions that get caught up in fishing accidents, with over 100 fatalities each year.
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