Please Join SF Bay ACS for Dr. Clair Simeone for "Investigating the role of marine morbilliviruses in cetacean strandings near

Cetacean morbilliviruses have the potential to cause explosive outbreaks with high mortality, and have emerged as the cause of die-offs of striped dolphins in the Mediterranean, harbor porpoises in the UK and Netherlands, and bottlenose dolphins along the U.S. Atlantic coast. Interestingly, large-scale mortality has not been documented in the Pacific Ocean as it has in the Atlantic, even though evidence of morbilliviral infection has been detected in animals in the Pacific. Since 2000, the Marine Mammal Center has responded to nearly 500 cetaceans along the rescue range, and a small percentage of those animals have post-mortem findings that are characteristic of a viral disease such as morbillivirus. The ACS San Francisco Bay Student Research Grant has allowed us to test tissues for the presence of morbillivirus, to determine whether this virus may be playing a role in strandings along the California coast.

Biography: Dr. Claire Simeone is a Conservation Medicine Veterinarian with The Marine Mammal Center (TMMC) in Sausalito, and National Marine Fisheries Service Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program. In addition to providing clinical care to the marine mammals undergoing rehabilitation at TMMC, she also responds to Unusual Mortality Events, provides veterinary support for field projects across the country, and works on a variety of research projects. She also coordinates the International Veterinary In-Residence training program, which brings marine mammal veterinarians from around the world to train at TMMC for 3 months in medicine, anesthesia, necropsy, and collaborative research.

Podcast “You’re the Expert” is a radio show that combines science and comedy, where three comedians try to guess what an expert does all day: https://soundcloud.com/you…/marine-mammals-and-dolphin-drugs