Marine Mammal Diseases and Diagnostics San Diego Natural History Museum

A technical lecture on the diagnosis, treatment, and husbandry of marine mammals—primarily dolphins and California sea lions—covering field capture devices, restraint and anesthesia, and a range of clinical tools. The speaker discusses routine blood chemistry panels and enzyme markers, gastric cytology (identifying white blood cells from stomach samples), and parasitology by examining feces, sputum, and other exudates to detect parasite eggs and assess infection severity for targeted therapy. Liver problems receive special attention: beyond palpation/biopsy, the team uses a functional “cardio green” (dye) clearance test with timed blood draws (10–60 minutes) to quantify hepatic excretion patterns. The talk also outlines early pregnancy diagnosis efforts in dolphins via Doppler ultrasound (fetal heartbeat around ~5 months of a 12-month gestation) and scanning ultrasound for imaging the fetus and detecting abnormalities earlier than visual signs.

Therapeutic case studies include heartworm in a sea lion (acquired during brief time in Florida), treated with an arsenical drug delivered by cardiac catheterization; and a severe brain lesion in a “white-sided porpoise” attributed to a fluke (“genus nasotrimum,” per the talk). In Tursiops, similar parasites cause chronic craniosinus infections with persistent, malodorous blowhole discharge, now controlled with a drug regimen reported as 100% effective under tested dosing schedules. The session closes with antibiotic pharmacokinetics—tracking uptake and excretion to set dose and frequency—and a focus on respiratory disease (noting severe pneumonia and mucus accumulation) as a major clinical challenge.