Deepwater Horizon (DWH) was the largest offshore oil spill in the petroleum industry’s history. DWH significantly altered the ecology and biology of the Gulf of Mexico and its surrounding areas, including many species of threatened and endangered marine life and habitat quality. Following the oil spill in April 2010, an unusual mortality event occurred in the Gulf of Mexico in cetaceans, primarily bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Dolphin morbillivirus (DMV) was investigated to be the cause of this event. DMV is a well-recognized paramyxovirus that causes dolphin deaths worldwide from acute viral pneumonia, viral encephalitis, or from fungal or bacterial infections from immunosuppression. Therefore, the objective of our research was to determine how the event of oil spills affects the exposure of bottlenose dolphins to morbillivirus. We conducted thorough literature reviews to obtain the demographic data for different age categories in order to develop an age-structured model using STELLA® 7.0.1 to determine morbillivirus exposure in bottlenose dolphins. We then used the model to quantify the effects of DWH on the morbillivirus exposure to bottlenose dolphins’ population dynamics into the future 30 years.
Results/Conclusions
The results of the baseline model without dolphin morbillivirus effects show a slight increase in the population from 218 to 262 individuals within 30 years. All age classes gain a negative trend after applying the different DVM mortality rate percentages, implying the possibility of endangering the population’s current conservation status. The graph with 30% DMV shows the most intense decrease of up to 72.07%, but even the lower percentages of DVM (10% and 20%) show significant population declines up to 25.84% and 39.22%, respectively.