#Heat marine wildlife masse skin

Kutz has little doubt that the northward movement of novel parasites will accelerate as more wildlife species expand their range, as humans move northward with their pets and livestock, and as more cruise and cargo ships travel through an increasingly ice-free Arctic with pathogens attached to their hulls or in their bilge water, which is routinely flushed out without monitoring or penalty. “We know that these muskoxen died quickly and that they may have been highly stressed by hot temperatures or ecosystem changes on the landscape,” said Kutz.

While it is possible that nesting snow geese that migrate to Banks and Victoria islands brought the disease in from the south, Kutz suspects that the bacteria may have already been there, and that ecosystem stresses brought on by climate change - especially rising temperatures - may have made the animals more vulnerable to infection.

#Heat marine wildlife masse skin

Pigs are now routinely vaccinated against the bacterium because it can cause arthritis, skin disease, and sudden death when it creates lesions on the heart valves of animals. She concluded that the muskoxen died from erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae, a bacterium normally found in pigs and poultry, and carried by wild birds and rodents, such as lemmings. Of the 38,000 animals on Banks Island in 2010, only about 14,000 remain today the population worldwide is less than 140,000. Kutz was brought in to determine what was killing thousands of muskoxen on Banks and Victoria islands in the western Arctic from 2010 to 2014. “In most cases, we don’t know whether these pathogens are new and being brought in from the south, or whether they have always been there.” “Our ability to detect and monitor the movement of pathogens in the Arctic is abominable,” says Kutz, who specializes in studying how changes in the climate and landscape can alter the relationship of hosts and parasites. A record heat wave that swept across the tundra that summer is thought to have thawed out reindeer carcasses that were infected with the spores. One person died from anthrax, and several dozen reindeer herders got sick when the animals succumbed to the disease. The anthrax outbreak in the far northern Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of Siberia compelled Russia’s Department of Defense to launch an emergency task force to help vaccinate 730,000 reindeer. One possibility, she and other scientists say, is that climate warming and ecosystem changes are causing some bacteria, such as those that cause avian cholera, to mutate, or may be making Arctic animals more susceptible to pathogens that previously did them no serious harm.Īnother possibility being investigated by scientists is that bacteria such as anthrax - an outbreak of which resulted in the culling of 250,000 reindeer in western Siberia in 20 - are being liberated by rapidly thawing permafrost. Susan Kutz - a University of Calgary veterinary parasitologist who identified a novel form of the parasitic nematode worm, the lungworm, in muskoxen in the High Arctic - is one of a small number of veterinarians and biologists trying to decipher the causes and impacts of changing disease outbreaks in the Arctic. In recent years, a plethora of deadly and debilitating diseases have struck reindeer in Scandinavia and Russia, muskoxen on Banks and Victoria islands in Arctic Canada, polar bears and seals off the coast of Alaska, and eider ducks in northern Hudson Bay and the Bering Sea.

But emerging evidence suggests that some of these newly arriving species may be bringing rare or novel pathogens to the Arctic. At the same time, on land, grizzly bears, white-tailed deer, coyotes, and other animals and birds have been expanding their range into the warming boreal forest and Arctic tundra.įor the indigenous people who subsist on Arctic animals such as muskoxen, caribou, seals, polar bears, and eider ducks - species that are in decline in some places - the newcomers are potentially a welcome addition to their diet. Other whale species - including minke, bottlenose, fin, and sperm whales - are also making their way north as the Arctic heats up. Most notably, as sea ice melts, ice-avoiding killer whales have been moving deeper into the Arctic Ocean, hunting and killing both narwhal and beluga whales. Humpbacks are not the only marine mammals that have been expanding their range northward. The whale was at least twice the size of the 15- to 20-foot-long beluga whales that are traditionally seen in this part of the world.īased on the photos taken, scientists concluded that the whale was a humpback, the first ever seen in that part of Hudson Bay, and one of a handful that have recently been spotted in the North American Arctic. During the last week of September, Inuit residents in the community of Arviat on the northwest coast of Hudson Bay were surprised to see a mysterious whale following a small boat heading back to the village.