The last continent: how deadly bird flu travelled the world before landing on a remote Australian beach

The H5N1 virus has now reached every continent on the planet. What does it mean for some of the world’s unique species?

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It was a rough five-day sail from the Falkland Islands and, as the science expedition approached the South Georgia coast, they found fur seal carcasses floating on the water. “There were these moments when it would hit us,” says Dr Jane Younger, remembering the expedition to the British sub-Antarctic territory six months ago.

Younger, an ecologist at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, was with scientists from the United States, France, South Africa and the Falklands to check on the spread of the H5N1 variant of bird flu.