Sea turtles reveal alarming rise of drug-resistant bacteria in Mediterranean
A groundbreaking study by University of Haifa scientists, in collaboration with national partners, has uncovered alarming rates of multidrug-resistant bacteria in sea turtles off Israel's coast, raising serious concerns about the widespread impact of human pollution on ocean health and potential risks to public health.
The research, published in the journal Total Environment Microbiology, reveals that three out of every four bacterial strains isolated from sea turtles undergoing rehabilitation in Israel are resistant to multiple types of antibiotics. This exceptionally high rate of antibiotic resistance was found in loggerhead and green sea turtles at the Michmoret Rescue Center.
"Sea turtles serve as a natural warning sign for the condition of our marine environment—when they show such high levels of resistance, it's a clear indication that the marine system in our area is absorbing pollution originating from human activity,' stated Dr. Danny Morick, a marine veterinarian and researcher at the Morris Kahn Marine Research Station of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at University of Haifa and one of the study's authors.
Sea turtles are considered crucial bioindicators of marine environmental health due to their extensive lifespans, long-distance migrations, and frequent presence in sensitive coastal zones heavily impacted by human activity. They are known to carry various pollutants, including waste, heavy metals, and bacteria, providing vital information on environmental changes and the effects of human-generated pollution.
This study, a first of its kind, was conducted by master's student Vanessa Bachmann, Dr. Morick, Dr. Dalit Meron, Prof. Dan Tchernov (head of the Charney School of Marine Sciences), Dr. Yaniv Levy (director of the National Sea Turtle Rescue Center), and Drs. Shlomo Blum and Marcelo Fleker from the Bacteriology Laboratory at the Kimron Veterinary Institute in Beit Dagan.
Samples were collected between 2019 and 2021 from the respiratory tract, skin, and digestive systems of 23 injured turtles. Many of these turtles had sustained injuries from fishing hooks, nets, marine debris, or winter storms. From these samples, researchers isolated 93 distinct bacterial strains, identifying their species and resistance characteristics through bacterial cultures, genetic sequencing (16S rRNA), and antibiotic susceptibility testing.
The alarming discovery was that three out of every four bacteria isolated exhibited multidrug resistance (MDR). Many of these bacteria belonged to genera such as
Vibrio, Shewanella, and Psychrobacter, some of which are known to cause disease in marine animals and possess the potential for transmission to humans.
Antibiotic sensitivity tests further revealed widespread resistance to commonly used human antibiotics: approximately 95% of the bacteria were resistant to cefazolin, about 50% to ampicillin, and roughly 45% to amoxicillin-clavulanate.
'These findings highlight how pollution from land sources can reach the sea, create resistant bacteria, and ultimately pose a risk that circles back to us,' explained Dr. Levy. He added that "sea turtles provide a kind of window into what is happening beneath the surface of the marine environment, revealing processes that are otherwise very difficult to monitor. This is why it's so important to continue observing the marine ecosystem and work to reduce the spread of antibiotic resistance before it ends up on our plates.'
The researchers assert that these findings reinforce the value of sea turtles as effective bioindicators for monitoring the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in marine ecosystems, complementing ongoing global environmental monitoring efforts for other pollutants.
In their conclusion, the scientists emphasized the critical need for an integrated "One Health" approach: 'We need to develop systematic monitoring programs that collect reliable long-term data and examine the links between animal health, environmental conditions, and human health'. They believe that "understanding resistance patterns can help us develop strategies to reduce pollution caused by human activity and contribute to preserving the balance of the marine ecosystem for future generations.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
WIRED
7 hours ago
- WIRED
Can US Measles Outbreaks Be Stopped?
Jul 16, 2025 2:42 PM The US almost lost its measles elimination status once. Lessons from that episode suggest it will be more difficult to avoid doing so now. The US is experiencing its worst year for measles in over three decades, with more than 1,300 cases in 40 states as of July 16. Cases were almost as high in 2019, putting the country's measles elimination status at risk. Six years ago, health officials were able to stop the spread. But amid growing public backlash against vaccines, many of the tactics used then may not work now. Measles elimination means there has been no continuous transmission in a country for longer than 12 months. That almost happened in the 2019 outbreak, which largely affected Orthodox Jewish populations in New York City and some surrounding counties. In fall 2018, US travelers returning from Israel tested positive for measles. The disease quickly spread throughout close-knit communities, especially among children, due to low vaccination rates. While the statewide measles vaccination rate for school-age children was 98 percent the previous school year, vaccination coverage in schools in the outbreak area was only 77 percent. Because measles is highly contagious, a 95 percent vaccination rate is needed to protect a community from the disease. As a result, the majority of measles cases occurred in individuals 18 and under, nearly 86 percent of whom were known to be unvaccinated. Some of those people developed severe complications, including pneumonia, and nearly 8 percent were hospitalized. The current surge is being fueled by an outbreak that started in an undervaccinated Mennonite community in West Texas. Cases have since spread to other Texas counties, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Two children in Texas with no underlying conditions and one adult in New Mexico have died this year as a result of measles. All were unvaccinated. 'There are definitely parallels. What we saw in New York was very much the result of years and years of spread of misinformation and disinformation around the safety of vaccines,' says Neil Vora, executive director of Preventing Pandemics at the Source Coalition and previously a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who helped respond to the 2019 outbreak. Cases eventually burned out in New York after a months-long effort that included both traditional public health approaches and policy changes at the local and state level. 'You need to take the first case seriously, because it's like kindling. You never know when that fire is just going to break out,' says Oxiris Barbot, the current president and CEO of the United Hospital Fund, who served as New York City's health commissioner from 2018 to 2020. As the disease spread, Barbot realized the city health department would need to go to the source of transmission, largely the Orthodox Jewish schools in affected neighborhoods. Working with school administrators, they reviewed vaccination records to identify unvaccinated or under-vaccinated children. Following an exposure, those children were prohibited from attending school and childcare for 21 days, the incubation period for measles. Similar measures were taken in some counties outside the city. 'It took a lot of staff time, a lot of leg work,' Barbot says. In one school, a contagious child led to more than 25 infections in other students and further spread outside the school. She says the health department was 'heavily involved' in making sure schools were abiding by the quarantine measures.' Health officials also worked to combat misinformation. A Jewish anti-vaccine group called Parents Teaching and Advocating for Children's Health, or PEACH, distributed a 40-page anti-vaccination booklet titled 'The Vaccine Safety Handbook' that contained conspiracy theories and inaccurate information, including the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. In response, the city health department mailed booklets that provided accurate and religiously relevant information about vaccines to thousands of households in affected neighborhoods and launched a campaign to combat vaccine myths. 'We were consistently delivering the same message that was backed by science and that gave our community partners the legitimacy with which to engage their family, their friends, and their neighbors in countering the myths and disinformation that was being shared,' Barbot says. When those efforts weren't enough on their own, New York City used its public health authority to increase vaccination rates. In April 2019, about six months after the first cases appeared, Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency, requiring individuals living, working, or going to school in affected zip codes to be vaccinated against measles. Those who didn't comply could be fined. In Rockland County, unvaccinated people under the age of 18 were banned from public places for 30 days. That summer, the New York legislature also changed statewide vaccination requirements to remove religious exemptions, which were previously allowed. The change applied to public, private, and religious schools. As a result of the efforts in New York, tens of thousands of vaccine doses were administered. In one affected Brooklyn neighborhood, the percentage of children who received at least one dose of MMR vaccine increased from less than 80 percent to 91 percent between October 2018 and September 2019. A modeling study by a researcher at Columbia University found that without these measures, numbers of infections and hospitalizations could have been 10 times higher. Those efforts won't necessarily map neatly onto the current measles outbreak. Vaccine requirements would likely face pushback in conservative states like Texas, especially since mistrust around vaccines has risen since the Covid-19 pandemic. (In fact, in May, Texas lawmakers passed a bill to make it easier for parents to seek vaccine exemptions for their children. That law goes into effect September 1.) 'Different approaches are going to have to be tailored for the unique needs of those specific areas. It's not a one-size-fits all approach,' Vora says. In Texas, the Department of State Health Services carried out a comprehensive paid media campaign that included online, broadcast, billboard, and on-site ads in businesses in two phases from March to June to encourage measles vaccination. The department was especially focused on areas where measles was spreading and areas at greater risk of an outbreak. This was in addition to the department's usual vaccination campaigns, a spokesperson tells WIRED via email. Zach Holbrooks, executive director for the South Plains Public Health District in Texas, which covers Gaines, Yoakum, Terry and Dawson counties, says his department had mobile vaccine and testing clinics operating in all four counties from February until May, when cases started to decline. Gaines County, which has reported more than half of the cases in Texas, is no longer an active outbreak county as of July 8. 'Anytime we saw cases popping up where they hadn't been before, we would get with our state partners and deploy resources to those areas,' Holbrooks says. 'All we can do is supply opportunities for people to get screened or vaccinated. It's really up to them to take advantage of those services.' In Gaines County, 313 people were vaccinated as part of those efforts, although Holbrooks says he was hoping to see more. His district tried to get the word out about vaccination with a mobile billboard truck that drove around the region. They also worked with the state and CDC to translate vaccine communication into German to target the Mennonite community. 'The messaging was out there,' Holbrooks says. But he thinks lingering mistrust from the Covid-19 pandemic has led to more people rejecting vaccines and public health guidance. 'Sometimes attitudes and feelings about vaccines are pretty hardwired in people, and it's hard to overcome the negative beliefs that they have.' It's also been challenging to get people to comply with the 21-day quarantine rule. He received reports of kids with measles being out in public with their parents. 'A lot of people didn't take it seriously,' he says of the quarantine period. Another hurdle is that many people are traveling for summer vacations, which can easily spread disease and make it harder to trace the chains of transmission. There are signs, however, that disease spread may be slowing down. The number of new measles cases has been declining in recent weeks, according to the CDC. Still, with pockets of low vaccination across the country, transmission could continue throughout the rest of the year, and future outbreaks are likely. Building back trust in vaccines and public health will take time. Barbot says consistent messaging at the federal, state, and local levels is one step in that direction. While current US Health and Human Services secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has tepidly endorsed the measles vaccine, he has also made the false claim that protection from the vaccine wanes quickly and has promoted vitamin A as a treatment for measles. While vitamin A is often given to children with nutritional deficiencies who get measles, it doesn't kill the virus. 'It's not too late,' Barbot says. 'With an all-out effort we can avoid losing that [elimination] status.'
Associated Press
18 hours ago
- Associated Press
Israel-backed aid organization in Gaza says 20 killed at distribution site, mostly in stampede
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — An Israeli-backed American organization that runs an aid program in the Gaza Strip said Wednesday 20 Palestinians were killed near a distribution site. This comes as Israeli strikes killed 22 others, including 11 children, according to hospital officials. The Gaza Humanitarian Fund said 19 people were trampled in a stampede and one person was fatally stabbed in the violence near a distribution hub in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. The group, which rarely acknowledges trouble at its distribution sites, accused Hamas of fomenting panic and spreading misinformation that led to the violence, though it provided no evidence to support the claim.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
UN says malnutrition in Gaza has doubled as Israeli strikes kill more than 90
Malnutrition rates among children in the Gaza Strip have doubled since Israel imposed sharp restrictions on the entry of food in March, the UN has said. It comes as new Israeli strikes killed more than 90 Palestinians, including dozens of women and children, according to health officials. Hunger has been rising among Gaza's more than two million Palestinians since Israel broke a ceasefire in March to resume the war and banned all food and other supplies from entering Gaza, saying it aimed to pressure Hamas to release hostages. It slightly eased the blockade in late May, allowing in a trickle of aid. UNRWA, the main UN agency caring for Palestinians in Gaza, said it had screened nearly 16,000 children under age five at its clinics in June and found 10.2% of them were acutely malnourished. By comparison, in March, 5.5% of the nearly 15,000 children it screened were malnourished. – New airstrikes kill several families One strike in the northern Shati refugee camp killed a 68-year-old Hamas member of the Palestinian legislature, as well as a man and a woman and their six children who were sheltering in the same building, according to officials from the heavily damaged Shifa Hospital, where the casualties were taken. One of the deadliest strikes hit a house in Gaza City's Tel al-Hawa district on Monday evening and killed 19 members of the family living inside, according to Shifa Hospital. The dead included eight women and six children. A strike on a tent housing displaced people in the same district killed a man and a woman and their two children. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the strikes. Gaza's Health Ministry said in a daily report on Tuesday afternoon that the bodies of 93 people killed by Israeli strikes had been brought to hospitals in Gaza over the past 24 hours, along with 278 wounded. It did not specify the total number of women and children among the dead. The Hamas politician killed in a strike early on Tuesday, Mohammed Faraj al-Ghoul, was a member of the bloc of representatives from the group that won seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council in the last national elections, held in 2006. The Israeli military says it only targets militants and tries to avoid harming civilians. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in densely populated areas. But daily, it hits homes and shelters where people are living without warning or explanation of the target. – Malnutrition grows Unicef, which screens children separately from Unrwa, has also reported a marked increase in malnutrition cases. It said this week its clinics had documented 5,870 cases of malnutrition among children in June, the fourth straight month of increases and more than double the around 2,000 cases it documented in February. Experts have warned of famine since Israel tightened its long-running blockade in March. Israel has allowed an average of 69 trucks a day carrying supplies, including food, since it eased the blockade in May, according to the latest figures from Cogat, the Israeli military agency in charge of co-ordinating aid. That is far below the hundreds of trucks a day the UN says are needed to sustain Gaza's population. On Tuesday, Cogat blamed the UN for failing to distribute aid, saying in a post on X that thousands of pallets of supplies were inside Gaza waiting to be picked up by UN trucks. The UN says it has struggled to pick up and distribute aid because of Israeli military restrictions on its movements and the breakdown in law and order. Israel has also let in food for distribution by an American contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. GHF says it has distributed food boxes with the equivalent of more than 70 million meals since late May at the four centres it runs in the Rafah area of southern Gaza and in central Gaza. More than 840 Palestinians have been killed and more than 5,600 others wounded in shootings as they walk for hours trying to reach the GHF centres, according to the Health Ministry. Witnesses say Israeli forces open fire with barrages of live ammunition to control crowds on the roads to the GHF centres, which are located in military-controlled zones. The military says it has fired warning shots at people it says have approached its forces in a suspicious manner. GHF says no shootings have taken place in or immediately around its distribution sites. – No breakthrough in ceasefire efforts The latest attacks came after US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held two days of talks last week that ended with no sign of a breakthrough in negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release. Israel has killed more than 58,400 Palestinians and wounded more than 139,000 others in its retaliation campaign since Hamas' October 7 2023, attack, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Just over half the dead are women and children, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its tally. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after its attack 21 months ago, in which militants stormed into southern Israel and killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. They abducted 251 others, and the militants are still holding 50 hostages, less than half of them believed to be alive.
