ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) – the symptoms of a mysterious disease that has killed dozens of seals and infected the walrus of Alaska are being now in polar bears, said this week the unit of geological monitoring of United States (USGS for its acronym in English).
Nine polar bears in the region of the Beaufort Sea near point Barrow were found with parts of the skin without hair and full of rezumantes ulcers, some detected in seals and walrus-like symptoms, said the Agency in a statement.
But unlike seals and walruses sick, concerned bears appeared otherwise healthy, said Tony DeGange, head of the Department of biology at the Scientific Center of the USGS in Alaska. Also reported that there has been no deaths between polar bears.
The nine affected bears were among the 33 that biologists have captured and examined during his investigations of routine on the Arctic Coast, according to DeGange.
Fur losses have already seen before in polar bears, but the prevalence on examined bears, seals and walruses similar problems have triggered alarms, said.
The USGS is in contact with agencies who study other animals to investigate whether there is a connection, said.
“There is a lot that we don’t know if we are dealing with something that is the same or something different”, stated.
The appearance of the disease was confirmed last summer. We found some 60 dead seals and other 75 sick, according to the national administration of the Oceanic and atmospheric (NOAA for its acronym in English).
Also found several sick walruses in Northwest Alaska, and some killed, according to the fish and wildlife of U.S. service.
Seals and walruses sick, many of them young specimens, presented difficulties in breathing and lethargy, as well as bleeding ulcers, according to experts. Agencies launched an investigation to discover the cause of the disease, also detected in peripheral areas of Canada and Russia.
Preliminary studies showed that it was not of a poisoning by radiation, discarding the theory that animals ill contamination filtered by the nuclear power plant in Fukushima, destroyed by a tsunami in Japan at the moment.
The disease continues to spread among the population of seals. A copy sick and almost without fur was found a month ago near Yakutat, on the coast of the Gulf of Alaska, according to the Agency. The animal was so ill that he had to be sacrificed.
All affected species dependent on the sea ice of the Arctic and are considered it vulnerable to seasonal ice loss.
