Iqaluit-born student completes master’s thesis on ringed seal health

For her master’s thesis project, Enooyaq Sudlovenick decided to take a closer look at an animal she grew up hunting and eating: the ringed seal.

While completing her master’s of science degree in veterinary medicine at the University of Prince Edward Island, Sudlovenick, 27, travelled back to her hometown of Iqaluit several times over two years to study the seals.

Her research examined the health of harvested seals specifically, meaning animals caught by hunters in the area around Iqaluit.

“The key word here is harvested, because we’re not looking at the whole ringed seal population in the Iqaluit area. Just the seals that the people are eating,” she said.

To evaluate each seal’s health, Sudlovenick looked for the presence of antibodies to five different types of bacteria: trichinella, brucella, leptospira, erysipelas and toxoplasma.

She worked with local hunters to collect samples from 55 seals. She also interviewed nine hunters and elders and a woman who processes seal skin.

“I took lots of samples of blubber and muscle, liver and lungs … a bit of everything,” she said.

Because Sudlovenick only needed tiny samples, each seal was returned to the hunter. She then froze her samples and brought them back to the university for examination.

Through her analysis, she found antibodies to four out of the five types of bacteria she was looking for. This does not necessarily mean those bacteria are living in the seal, Sudlovenick explained.

“It just means that they were exposed to it. Even though I had the flu month a month ago, I was exposed at some point, so I still have those antibodies,” she said.

One of the antibodies, brucella, is unsurprising to find in the North, Sudlovenick said.

“Most people know what brucella is up North because caribou tend to have it.”

Another antibody that was heavily present, leptospira, is commonly found in seals, she said.

Less than 10 per cent of the antibodies she found contained toxoplasma, a bacteria usually present in domestic cats. It is unclear how it could have turned up in the seals, but she has plenty of theories.

“It does survive for up to three years in sea water, so it could come up through sea currents… but that’s like a once-in-a-million chance,” she said.

But she thankfully found no traces of trichinella, a type of parasitic roundworm.

Sudlovenick also took a close look at the conditions of the seals’ bodies by examining things like their fur and lungs.

“There were some non-serious things that we found. There was one seal that had a fungal infection on the fur, which is not a big deal,” she said.

Those seals are still safe to eat, she added.

One seal she examined had lungworm, a type of parasitic worm, which Sudlovenick says is fairly common.

However, some people may eat the infected lungs without knowing what lungworm looks like. If meat containing lungworm is eaten raw, it can infect humans.

“Mostly, our physicians just come in for visits and then they leave back south. If we could educate the physicians on the signs and risks of these diseases that get passed from animals to people, then we could potentially be catching things before they get too dangerous,” Sudlovenick said.

Sudlovenick suggested it would be helpful to distribute a pamphlet that identifies these diseases to hunters so they easily recognize them.

In looking for heavy metals in the seals’ bodies, Sudlovenick noted that older seals had a higher amount of heavy metals, including mercury, than young ones. Hunters prefer to catch young seals, she said.

“Older seals are eating more than the younger seals, and that’s how the mercury gets into their body. Just by eating their normal foods.”

Another part of Sudlovenick’s research was to make sure Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit, or traditional knowledge, was incorporated throughout the two-year process.

“I really wanted to listen to Iqaluit locals to find out what their thoughts on this research were, and what research they wanted to see.”

In June, she presented the final results of her research at the Nunavut Research Institute in Iqaluit. She also shared her findings with the hunters she worked with.

“There were quite a few hunters who were really keen on finding out the results,” she said.

“The take-home message is if someone asked me if I would keep eating ringed seals I would say 100 per cent yes, I’m going to keep eating them. We didn’t find anything scary,” she said.

Sudlovenick will start a PhD program at the University of Manitoba this fall to study belugas.