The repeated deaths of Caspian seals along the shores of the Caspian Sea have become a persistent environmental concern, with experts still unable to identify a definitive cause despite years of investigations, according to a report by Iran's Shargh newspaper.
What was once an occasional discovery has turned into a recurring pattern. Seal carcasses continue to wash ashore across the Caspian coastline, prompting authorities and environmental organizations to record the losses while searching for answers.
Researchers increasingly view the deaths as the result of multiple pressures rather than a single cause. Climate change, declining water levels, industrial pollution, overfishing, accidental entanglement in fishing nets and the possible spread of disease have all been cited as contributing factors.
The Caspian seal (Pusa caspica) is the only marine mammal native to the Caspian Sea and one of the region's most distinctive species. Found nowhere else in the world, it plays a key role in maintaining ecological balance by feeding on small fish and other aquatic organisms.
Environmental experts regard the species as an indicator of the sea's overall health. A decline in seal numbers can point to broader problems, including pollution, shrinking fish stocks and disruption of the marine food chain.
The species is also part of the shared natural heritage of the five countries bordering the Caspian Sea — Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Its survival is closely linked to the environmental future of a region where millions depend on fishing, tourism and coastal industries.
Deaths across the Caspian
The crisis attracted international attention in 2022 when around 2,500 dead Caspian seals were found along Russia's Dagestan coast in one of the largest recorded die-offs involving the species.
Scientists examined a range of possible causes, including disease outbreaks, oxygen depletion, environmental contamination and natural gas emissions from the seabed. No definitive explanation emerged.
The event was not isolated. Hundreds of dead seals had previously been recorded along the Dagestan coastline, suggesting that large-scale mortality events are becoming a recurring feature of the Caspian ecosystem.
Researchers also point to climate change as a growing threat. Caspian seals rely on ice in the northern part of the sea to breed and raise their pups. Rising temperatures and shrinking winter ice cover have reduced the availability of suitable breeding habitat, placing additional pressure on an already vulnerable population.
Population in decline
Conservation estimates indicate the Caspian seal population has fallen by more than 90 percent over the past century. Once numbering above one million animals, the population is now believed to have dropped below 100,000.
The species is listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, reflecting concerns about its long-term survival.
Amir Sayad Shirazi, director of Iran's Caspian Seal Conservation Center, told Shargh that pollution remains one of the most significant threats facing the species.
Because the Caspian Sea is shared by five countries and functions as a closed body of water, environmental damage in one area can affect the wider ecosystem, he said.
Russia halted commercial hunting of Caspian seals in 2020, eliminating one source of mortality that had previously resulted in thousands of deaths annually. Yet unexplained die-offs continue to undermine conservation efforts.
For conservationists, the fate of the seal increasingly mirrors the condition of the sea itself, making its survival a test of whether the region can protect one of its most distinctive ecosystems.
The warnings point to a new phase in Iran’s long-running drug crisis. The problem is no longer only that medicines are expensive or hard to find. The formal supply chain itself is weakening, while the black market grows around patients who cannot obtain medicine through pharmacies.
Haleh Hamedifar, head of the Association of Medical Biotechnology Product Manufacturers, told the semi-official ISNA news agency that the main challenge facing Iran’s pharmaceutical industry is not simply a shortage of foreign currency, but “instability in decision-making and lack of coordination in implementation.”
“The pharmaceutical industry cannot be managed with daily decisions, changing circulars and unpredictable processes,” she said.
Hamedifar warned that sudden policy changes disrupt the supply of raw materials, production and distribution, with effects that appear months later “in pharmacies, hospitals and ultimately at the patient’s bedside.”
Iran says it produces most of the medicines consumed in the country, but domestic production still depends on imported raw materials, equipment, packaging, machinery and spare parts. That leaves even locally made drugs exposed to banking restrictions, currency decisions and import delays.
Hamedifar said recent shifts in currency rules have forced some raw materials out of preferential currency categories and into exchange-rate systems that are not reliably funded. Alternative routes, including the use of export proceeds or privately held foreign currency, were introduced before the administrative infrastructure was ready, she said.
Companies have been forced to amend files, repeat import registrations and restart procedures they had already completed, she said.
“The problem in many cases is not the decision itself, but how it is implemented,” Hamedifar said.
She said outages and errors in government platforms, including disconnects between trade, drug-regulation and banking systems, should not be treated as technical glitches because each delay can postpone the arrival of raw materials and later disrupt drug supply.
Interior Ministry spokesman Ali Zeynivand separately acknowledged that high medicine prices are real and said the government does not deny that internal failures may be part of the problem.
“Part of the problems are caused by the imposed war, another part by the sanctions that already existed, and part may be due to our shortcomings or lack of precision,” he told the Dideban Iran news website. “We do not reject any of these.”
Zeynivand said President Masoud Pezeshkian, himself a physician, is personally sensitive to the issue and that the Health Ministry, Plan and Budget Organization and Central Bank are working on measures to contain the situation. But he cautioned that Iran’s economic problems would not be solved simply by signing a memorandum.
For patients, the consequences are already visible in higher out-of-pocket costs, incomplete prescriptions, empty pharmacy shelves and growing reliance on unofficial sellers.
Mehdi Sanei, an investigator at Iran’s medical crimes prosecutor’s office, told the Iranian daily Shargh that Iran has only one legal medicine market: the official network supervised by the Health Ministry and Food and Drug Administration. Any medicine sold outside that chain is illegal, he said.
“In the field of medicine, there is no such thing as a legal free market,” Sanei said.
He said shortages are the starting point for much of the illegal trade. When patients cannot find medicine in pharmacies, they turn to dealers, Telegram channels, middlemen and informal networks.
“As long as medicine shortages exist, the smuggling market will exist,” he said.
Sanei warned that the illegal drug market is unusually profitable because patients cannot postpone treatment. Families dealing with cancer or chronic illness may sell savings, jewelry, cars or even homes to obtain scarce medicine.
“I do not know of a commodity whose profit is as guaranteed as smuggled medicine,” he said.
He said some black-market medicines are official Iranian-made drugs diverted from the legal system through fake prescriptions, distribution violations or other routes. But he described an even more dangerous trend: the growing presence of counterfeit or unauthorized medicines made inside Iran.
Sanei estimated that more than 80 percent of medicines in the illegal market are now unauthorized domestic products rather than genuine imported drugs.
Those products may be made in illegal workshops with unknown or ineffective materials and fake packaging, he said. Some may contain no active ingredient, contamination or harmful substances.
“People pay heavy costs, and there is no guarantee that what they receive is really medicine,” he said.
The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: shortages weaken the legal market, patients move toward illegal sellers, the black market becomes more profitable, and the official system loses more ground.
“The smaller the legal market becomes, the larger the illegal market becomes,” Sanei said.
