Swimming with the fishes

Recently, scientists have been discovering that land based pathogens that are infecting humans, cows, and even cats, have also been discovered to be infecting the sea mammal population, as large numbers of dolphins, sharks, and seals have been washing up ashore dead or dying. Researchers have found that these strains of bacteria, commonly infecting people, are resistant to bacteria. For example; a harp seal containing the bacteria Chryseobacterium indologenes to was resistant to 13 out of the 16 drugs tested by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Cape Cod. This is very alarming as surfers, fishermen, or anyone else who is active in ocean water can be exposed to these bacteria through open wounds or from oven digesting the water. Scientists such as Christopher Solomon describe these sea mammals as “swimming petri dishes”, as they hold the potential to nurture and transform these diseases until they re-emerge back into the human population even more advanced and resistant to antibiotics.