Overview
- Since early May, officials have recorded 20 dead grey seals along Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s northeast coast, with most finds on the southeast shore of Rügen.
- Ten carcasses were recovered and examined at the Deutsches Meeresmuseum in Stralsund while ten others could not be studied because of their condition or the way they were found.
- Examinations produced no single cause of death: some seals showed signs of age or disease, several were too decomposed to diagnose, and four had traces that could indicate human impacts but whose timing is unclear.
- The museum said bycatch is a possible explanation and investigators plan further virological tests and checks of whether more live seals were present this season to determine if the cluster is unusual.
- Landesumweltminister Till Backhaus said authorities will continue joint analyses, will not rush to blame coastal fishers, and cautioned that conclusive ties to fishing gear have not been established.