A measles-like virus is being cited as a likely cause for the mass dolphin die-off that’s been plaguing the U.S. East Coast this summer. 
 
 Since July 1, 333 carcasses have littered shores from New York to North Carolina – a number that’s roughly 10 times more than normal for this time of year. Scientists don’t yet know how many dolphins have died offshore without reaching mid-Atlantic beaches, but it could be thousands. In July, NOAA declared the die-off an Unusual Mortality Event, which frees up federal funding and investigators to address the crisis. 
 
 Now, a NOAA team in charge of investigating the event is pointing to a type of morbillivirus as the culprit behind the bottlenose dolphins deaths. Morbilliviruses are responsible for measles in humans, rinderpest in cattle, and canine distemper in dogs, coyotes, wolves and seals. There is no easy way to identify morbillivirus infection just by looking at a carcass, so identifying the pathogen as the cause of the die-off involved a feat of molecular detective work using tissue collected from the dead animals. 
 
 “I don’t know of anything that screams morbillivirus when you look at the inside of the animal,” said Charley Potter, a scientist at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Potter, along with his colleagues, has been helping to examine the carcasses of animals arriving in Virginia. “Some of the animals seem to be emaciated and debilitated, and others seem to be rather robust and healthy,” he said. 
 
 While there are no unifying anatomical findings that point toward the pathogen, many of the animals washing ashore have suggestive lesions in their mouths, lymph nodes, brain, or lungs. Potter, and the others who conduct necropsies (animal autopsies), collect bits of these damaged tissues, as well as other organs. 
 
 The tissues are then sent to several pathology labs, including those at the University of Georgia, the University of Florida, and the University of California, Davis. 
 
 There, scientists use a variety of techniques to search for morbillivirus within the tissues. One method involves looking closely at lesioned tissue for microscopic signs of the infection. Another uses antibodies to detect morbillivirus in the lesioned tissues. And the third looks for viral genes by amplifying genetic sequences within the animals’ tissues. 
 
 So far, nearly all of the carcasses – 32 out of 33 — fresh enough to be analyzed by these methods have tested positive for, or are strongly suspected of having, morbillivirus. Of those, genetic sequencing confirmed that 11 of the carcasses carry the cetacean form of the virus, which affects dolphins and porpoises. 
 
 “We feel very comfortable that this is a morbillivirus outbreak,” said Teri Rowles, NOAA’s Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program coordinator. “We are going to continue to look at potential secondary and contributing factors.” 
 
 The hunt for the source of the die-off has been slowed by the condition of many of the carcasses. Most are either too far decomposed or scavenged to preserve evidence of what killed them. Some pathogens, such as morbillivirus, can only be detected in freshly dead animals, so teams responding to stranded animals have been prioritizing collecting tissues from fresher carcasses. 
 
 “When we get animals that show significant skin fluffing and they’re starting to gas up and things like that, we really ratchet back on what is collected,” Potter said. 
 
 The bulk of the dead dolphins have stranded in Virginia, where teams have processed 174 carcasses since July 1. The next-hardest hit is New Jersey, with a total of 71 dead dolphins. There, teams are finding about a dolphin a day, said Bob Schoelkopf, founding director of the Marine Mammal Stranding Center in Brigantine, NJ. 
 
 “I just picked one up this morning – a youngster, about 150 pounds,” he said on Saturday. “But it was heavily scavenged by sharks, not salvageable for sampling.” 
 
 Initially, the event’s southern boundary ended at Virginia; but with North Carolina now reporting 42 dolphin strandings since July (about four times more than normal), the UME has been expanded to include that state. 
 
 The southward spread of the strandings is reminiscent of the morbillivirus outbreak of 1987-88, which ultimately led nearly 800 dead dolphins to wash ashore in the mid-Atlantic between June 1987 and May of the next year. Now, as it was a quarter century ago, the strandings began with a spike in the north before spreading to the south, a pattern scientists attribute to the southward migration of Atlantic ocean bottlenose dolphins. 
 
 “We’re expecting that if indeed this plays out the way that that die-off occurred, that we’re looking at mortalities being higher and morbillivirus spreading southward, and likely continuing to the spring of 2014,” Rowles said. 
 
 Scientists don’t know for sure what sparked the outbreak, but are guessing that affected dolphin populations have lost their ability to fight the virus, a protection they gained 25 years ago when it last struck the area. 
 
 “The picture that’s playing out so far is a classic introduction of a virus to a universally naïve population,” said Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinarian with the National Marine Mammal Foundation. As populations grow and reproduce, antibodies developed to combat morbillivirus years ago are diluted within the populations; now, it appears those levels have dipped below a tipping point, Venn-Watson said. 
 
 And, though we know it’s spreading, there’s no way to vaccinate dolphins against the spread of the virus. “[The die-off] would probably end when the number of susceptible animals still out there to infect dwindles,” said Jerry Saliki, a virologist at the University of Georgia. 
 
 The good news? “Not all infected animals will die,” he said. ||||| Hundreds of bottle-nosed dolphins have been dying on the East Coast, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says a virus is likely to blame. 
 
 Morbillivirus, a disease similar to measles in humans, has been found in some beached dolphins tested by NOAA, officials announced Tuesday. 
 
 Since July 1, 333 dolphins have stranded - gotten sick and washed up on beaches, or became stuck in shallow water - between New York and North Carolina. Most of them are dying off the coast of Virginia, where 174 have stranded since July 1. 
 
 "We don't have a lot of insight as to when it will stop. Typically, outbreaks last as long as there are susceptible animals that can be infected," Dr. Teri Rowles of the NOAA Fisheries Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program told reporters during a conference call. 
 
 NOAA has tested 33 beached dolphins, and 32 had either confirmed or suspected cases of the virus. 
 
 Based on a similar outbreak 26 years ago, NOAA expects dolphins will continue dying until spring 2014. 
 
 This year's dolphin die-off is the largest since a similar virus outbreak in 1987 and 1988, NOAA officials said. It's difficult to estimate how many dolphins will die, according to Dr. Lance Garrison of the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center. Estimates of a 30 percent to 40 percent mortality rate in that outbreak were later found to be inaccurately high, Garrison said. 
 
 Dolphins have very little resistance to the virus, which suppresses their immune systems, NOAA officials said. The virus causes lesions on dolphins' skin, in lymph nodes, and in their brains. 
 
 There is almost no chance the virus can spread to humans, officials said, as morbillivirus strains are specific to species. Humans have their own morbillivirus -measles - and have historically not contracted morbillivirus strains from animals during outbreaks. 
 
 Still, NOAA advised swimmers with open wounds to take precautions in areas where infected dolphins have been found. With their immune systems suppressed by the virus, the sick dolphins often contract other infections that can spread to humans. 
 
 "At this point, there isn't anything we can do to stop the virus," Rowles said. "We don't have a vaccine that is developed that could be easily deployed in a wild population of bottle-nosed dolphins." ||||| Play Facebook 
 
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 Genetic tests have confirmed that an outbreak of a measles-like virus known as morbillivirus is playing a major role in the massive dolphin die-off on the Mid-Atlantic coast. 
 
 This is the second big strike for the virus, which was the chief agent behind a wave of infections that struck bottlenose dolphins between June 1987 and March 1988, killing more than 700 animals before retreating into the blue. 
 
 
 
 "We are now calling it a morbillivirus outbreak," Teri Rowles of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program said during a telephone press briefing on Tuesday. As of Monday, 333 animals have died on coasts between New York and North Carolina. 
 
 Among 33 dolphins tested this summer, 32 dolphins have turned up with a suspected or confirmed case of the virus, Rowles said. Additional genome sequencing tests have confirmed that the cetacean morbillivirus was present in 11 animals. 
 
 Morbillivirus belongs to a family of RNA viruses that cause rinderpest in cattle, distemper in canine species, and measles in humans. In dolphins, the virus suppresses the immune system, so researchers are seeing "animals that are very thin, animals that have a lot of other diseases and infections," Rowles said. 
 
 
 
 The resurgence of the infection in bottlenoses could merely be natural forces at work. Infections have "always been happening in cycles," Perry Habecker, staff veterinary chief at the University of Pennsylvania, told NBC News. 
 
 The genetic makeup of bacteria and viruses changes slightly over time, Habecker said, and populations of animals can also lose their immunity. "There’s no doubt in my mind that these kinds of disease have been [recurring] for millennia." 
 
 Sarah Rose, left, with the Virginia Aquarium Stranding Response Team begins a necropsy on a dead dolphin at the Virginia Aquarium Marine Animal Care Center, in Virginia Beach, Va., on Aug. 6, 2013. L. Todd Spencer 
 
 Researchers suspect that morbillivirus is hosted by offshore populations of marine mammals, and was transmitted to coastal bottlenose dolphins in the spring or early summer. This year, the virus seems to have entered a population that "simply [doesn't] have an immune response to effectively fight off the virus," Stephanie Venn-Watson of the National Marine Mammal Foundation said. 
 
 Researchers are planning analyses for the very first cases — strandings that may have occurred as early as February or March this year — to check if environmental factors contributed as a trigger. 
 
 Aside from the morbillivirus, a second suspect is the Brucella bacterium, which has been found in tissue samples from four dolphins from Virginia, NOAA says. Marine mammals are common hosts for the bacterium. 
 
 In the last few weeks, dead dolphins have begun washing up on the North Carolina coasts, which indicates that the outbreak, like the migrating dolphin herds, is moving south. If this year's die-off progresses like the 1987-88 outbreak did, the strandings are likely to continue until the spring of 2014. 
 
 Between now and then, there's not much researchers can do to stop the spread of the virus — logistics stand in the way of research vessels going after wild dolphin herds with vaccines. 
 
 The strandings are likely to end as they probably began, through natural events. Researchers anticipate that some dolphins still out at sea survived the infection and gained immunity. Survivor numbers will grow, and over time the virus, having completed its deadly rounds, will find no new bottlenose dolphins to infect. 
 
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 Have you seen a stranded dolphin? NOAA has these safety tips: 
 
 Do not touch the dolphin. 
 
 
 
 Don’t allow pets to approach the dolphin. 
 
 
 
 Observe the animal from a safe distance of 100 yards (safe for you and the animal) 
 
 
 
 If you see a dead or stranded dolphin in New York, call the Riverhead Foundation's 24-hour rescue hotline at 631-369-9829. If you're in New Jersey, contact the Marine Mammal Stranding Center's hotline at 609-266-0538. 
 
 
 
 Nidhi Subbaraman writes about science and technology. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.
– The good news is that scientists now think they know why so many dead dolphins are washing up on shores along the East Coast—it's a virus akin to measles, reports Wired. The bad news is that they can't do anything but let it run its course. So far, about 330 dolphins have washed up, mostly in Virginia, a figure 10 times higher than normal. (And, of course, hundreds, perhaps thousands, more likely never reached shore.) A similar outbreak of this morbillivirus in 1987-88 caused 800 dead dolphins to wash ashore, and if the new outbreak follows the same pattern, the virus will probably remain in play until next spring. It's expected to move south along the Atlantic Seaboard. “At this point, there isn’t anything we can do to stop the virus,” says an official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We don’t have a vaccine that is developed that could be easily deployed in a wild population of bottlenose dolphins.” The dolphins probably lost their immunity since the last outbreak, a vet tells NBC News. It's not clear how the outbreak started, but scientists figure the coastal dolphins picked up the virus from some other marine mammal. It's all but impossible this strain could spread to humans, notes ABC News.