# A study has found the hundreds of Cape fur seal pups and sub-adults that died in the Western Cape in September last year succumbed to a variety of factors, including malnutrition. The provincial Department of Agriculture’s state veterinary laboratory found biotoxins were not responsible for the deaths, as was previously suspected. Municipalities in the Elands Bay area of the West Coast recovered or buried more than one-thousand-600 dead seals between September and November 2021.