Beach tours at a popular bay on South Australia’s Kangaroo Island have been paused to keep people away from vulnerable sea lions after the first case of suspected bird flu was discovered at the site.

SA Primary Industries Minister Clare Scriven said on Wednesday it was “highly likely” that 11 suspect cases of H5 bird flu in the state would be found positive.

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Julie Collins told a news conference later in the day that transmission had occurred between greater crested terns in the state.

“While there remains no evidence of any mass mortalities at this point in time, we ⁠do expect, with this local transmission, that there will be further detections in Australian wildlife,” she said.

Scriven said one of the detections was at Kangaroo Island’s Seal Bay, which is home to a colony of endangered sea lions. 

“One of the things we are doing…  is temporarily pausing the on-the-beach tours so that people can be kept separate from the seals, knowing that the population is so very vulnerable,” Scriven said.

“Now, this is simply important so that less human interaction means that there are higher levels of resilience to all diseases and all stress or risks to the Seal Bay population.

“We know that we have a very low number of seals in Australia, 80 per cent are in South Australia, and so every precaution that we can put in place is going to be important.”

Scriven said boardwalk tours would continue to be open and the government was focused on having “as resilient populations as possible”, through work like feral cat control programs to protect the beloved seal species. 

An Environment and Water Department spokesperson told InDaily last week that a total of 38 feral cats were trapped and removed from the Seal Bay Conservation Park before the feral cat project was wound up on June 30– the week bird flu arrived in South Australia. There were fears the feral cats could spread the disease to the vulnerable population.

On Saturday, the government announced an extra $2.7 million to continue work to eradicate feral cats on Kangaroo Island by 2030, the new work focused on the Dudley Peninsula area – about an hour’s drive from Seal Bay.

Officials are now waiting on final results in testing of 11 cases of suspected bird flu, all in greater crested terns. They include seven found in the south-east of the state and four on Kangaroo Island, including the one at Seal Bay.

The other three Kangaroo Island cases were found at Grace Bay. In the south-east, cases were found at Cape Jaffa, one at Port MacDonnell, and five around Southend Jetty, near Beachport.

Scriven said “this is concerning, but it’s certainly not unexpected”. 

It comes after Australian Chief Veterinary Officer Beth Cookson said on Tuesday that testing at CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness had confirmed H5 bird flu in seven greater crested terns found in South Australia’s south-east.

There have now been 27 confirmed or presumed positive detections of H5 bird flu in Australia in the states of SA, Western Australia, NSW and Queensland. All have been wild seabirds found in coastal locations.

There have been no detections of H5 bird flu in poultry, captive birds, or pets and other wildlife or livestock, and no evidence of any mass mortality events.

Scriven said she had attended an industry preparedness day on Tuesday and had seen the technology that would be deployed in the event of an outbreak in a poultry facility.