Researchers from UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz collected samples from seven elephant seal weanling pups found dead last week at Año Nuevo State Park in San Mateo County, and also observed live weanlings with tremors and seizure activity, according to a press release on Wednesday.
UC Davis said its scientists and researchers at UC Santa Cruz's Beltran Lab have been screening seabirds and elephant seals at Año Nuevo State Park and other areas along the California coast, and have previously detected multiple seabirds with HPAI H5N1.
The researchers said that this outbreak is the first among marine mammals in California and the first detection in northern elephant seals, which range across the eastern and central North Pacific Ocean from Alaska to Baja California, Mexico. A similar outbreak decimated the population of southern elephant seals in Argentina in 2023.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there have been 71 human cases of bird flu in North America as of February 2026, with 38 of those in California. Nearly all the cases involved people in direct contact with infected livestock or poultry, the CDC said. Two of those people have died.
Health experts say that while the risk of infection to the general public is very low, bird flu can spread between animals and humans. People are advised not to touch live or dead seals or allow pets to approach them.
Anyone who encounters a sick, injured or dead marine mammal is asked to call the NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region stranding hotline at (866) 767-6114.
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