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 Chapters 15, 16, and 29 ). Information on ocular and dental diseases is presented in the respective chapters (see Chapters 22 and 23 ). Most of the noninfectious conditions described in marine mammals 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 to provide an overview of the current literature available on noninfectious diseases in marine mammals. Information presented in this chapter is updated from the second edition of this text. More detailed reviews are provided for several noninfectious conditions, which have been more intensively investigated in the 15 years since the publication of the second edition of this book, including urogenital carcinoma of California sea lions (Zalophus californianus), freshwater skin disease in cetaceans, gas-embolism syndrome, and the effects of anthropogenic sound.
