ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AFP) – More than 500 Caspian seals, an endangered species in Kazakhstan, have washed ashore in the Caspian Sea in the past two weeks, authorities said Thursday, citing pollution or disease as possible causes.

Caspian seals are the only mammals in the world’s largest inland body of water, which has seen an alarming drop in water levels and rising temperatures that threaten flora and fauna.

“From October 24 to November 7, 534 carcasses of dead seals were washed ashore,” the Kazakh fisheries committee said in a statement days before the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, another Central Asian country which borders the lake.

“According to scientists, marine pollution and epidemics of infectious diseases are possible causes” of their deaths, the committee said, noting that only three percent of the seals became entangled in fishing nets.

Authorities said samples of the bodies, which were in a “highly decomposed state,” had been taken to a laboratory for testing and that it could take up to four months to obtain results.

Kazakhstan has included seals, whose population according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature has declined over the past century, on a list of endangered species, with authorities saying their numbers have dropped to about 270,000.

Kazakhstan and Russia – which also border the Caspian Sea – agreed in 2021 on a “joint action plan” to conserve the seal population.

The Caspian Sea is an enclosed sea bordered by five countries: Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, and they regularly report finding dead seals on their shores.

In 2022, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev promised to bring the problem “under his personal control” and suggested the creation of nature reserves in the area.