Arctic sea ice melting or accelerating the spread of pathogens

The Seal Plague virus (PDV) killed a large number of seals in the North Atlantic in 1988 and 2002, but was not confirmed in the North Pacific until 2004Tracey Goodstein, a researcher at the University of California, Davis, and colleagues looked at when PDV entered the North Pacific and risk factors associated with the pattern of virus occurrence and transmissionThey used PDV exposure and infection data collected between 2001 and 2016 for ice seals, North Sea lions, North Sea dogs and sea otters, as well as data on the animals' activitythey found that large-scale PDV exposure and infection of marine mammals in the North Pacific occurred in 2003 and 2004, and that more than 30 percent of animals tested positive for the virusThe popularity of PDV declined in the following years and again peaked in 2009Animal samples taken in 2004 and 2009 were 9.2 times more likely to be infected with the virus than in other yearsThis is related to the opening of new channels in 2002, 2005 and 2008 as detected by satellite imagerythe findings provide evidence of widespread exposure and infection of PDV in the North Pacific since 2002, the spread of the virus among various marine mammals, and PDV exposure and infection reach peaks after sea ice ablationPathogens spread between the North Pacific and north Atlantic and may become more frequent as Arctic sea ice continues to recede.