ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews a range of noninfectious diseases documented in marine mammals, excluding those known to be associated with toxicoses and nutritional deficiencies (see Chapter 22, Toxicology; Chapter 36, Nutrition). Most of these noninfectious conditions have been detected as a result of necropsies on individual stranded, harvested, or captive animals, rather than through systematic studies on wild populations. The literature consequently contains a multitude of scattered case reports with little information on the impact of these noninfectious conditions on wild marine mammal populations. The purpose of this chapter is to bring these individual reports together and provide an overview of the current literature available on noninfectious diseases in marine mammals. For ease of reference, separate sections of this chapter describe lesions identified as congenital defects, neoplastic lesions, and those associated with trauma, while other, miscellaneous lesions are described according to the organ system in which they were identified.
