Cancer in beluga from the St. Lawrence estuary.

Cancer in wildlife, a case study: beluga from the St. Lawrence estuary, Québec, Canada.

A population of approximately 650 beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) inhabits a short segment of the St. Lawrence estuary (SLE). Over 17 years (1983-1999), we have examined 129 (or 49%) of 263 SLE beluga carcasses reported stranded. The major primary causes of death were respiratory and gastrointestinal infections with metazoan parasites (22%), cancer (18%), and bacterial, viral, and protozoan infe...

Temporal trends of PBDEs in adult and newborn beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) from the St. Lawrence Estuary

.............................................................................................................................. IV RÉSUMÉ ................................................................................................................................... V INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................

Cancer in belugas from the St. Lawrence estuary.

In their paper published in the March 2002 issue of EHP, Martineau et al. (1) reported the results of 100 necropsies of St. Lawrence Estuary (SLE) belugas found dead, drifting, or stranded along the shoreline during 1983–1999. They gathered a remarkable set of pathology information on these dead animals and are to be commended for their work. In their report, Martineau et al. (1) used epidemiol...

Causes of mortality in St. Lawrence Estuary beluga (Delphinapterus leuca) from 1983 to 2012

Status of Beluga (delphinapterus Leucas) in the St. Lawrence River Estuary

The St. Lawrence Estuary (SLE) beluga are listed as threatened under the Species at Risk Act; a Recovery Strategy is defined, and their summer Critical Habitat has been identified. A review of the SLE beluga status (2007) concluded that the population was stable over the period 1988-2006. However, in recent years there has been an increase in reports of death of young-of-the-year, and an appare...