Over 15 years, researchers identified two new channels linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans between Russia and Alaska. Animals who live there are interacting for the first time, creating a reservoir of the deadly pathogen Phocine distemper virus.
"Animal health and human health and environmental health are so linked, if one deteriorates then the rest do, too," she told CNN.To evaluate the extent of the infection, researchers took nasal swabs and blood samples from more than 2,500 ice-dwelling seals, Steller sea lions and northern sea otters from Alaska to Russia living in its marginal seas and oceans.
Animals can't keep up with the rate of their rapidly changing environments, Goldstein said, and that makes them more susceptible to disease. — both are highly contagious respiratory diseases that spreads easily through contact .