Seals sick and dying in Alaska

From last October:

A mysterious and potentially widespread disease is thought to have contributed to the deaths of dozens of ringed seals along Alaska's Arctic coast. Scores more are sickened, some so ill that skin lesions bleed when touched.

The sickest ones don't move much on the beaches and they have blisters or wounds that bleed easily, including around the nose, eyes and especially the rear flippers. Others have lost much of their hair. "They're not deathly skinny. It's not like they're dying from malnutrition. But they're not in great body condition," he said. The reports haven't let up. "I just went out this morning and I saw a seal that died last night," Herreman said Wednesday afternoon. Link:


[link to hisz.rsoe.hu]

At first I thought Radiation:

[link to en.wikipedia.org]

However here is update March 8, 2012: Here is update:

A mysterious sickness that has killed Alaskan seals and walrus appears to be spreading. First spotted last year on Alaska’s northern coast, the illness was reported last week at the top of the Alaska panhandle where a dying seal was captured by fishermen. The seal, spotted at Yakutat near the top of the Alaska panhandle, was bald and lethargic and suffered conditions similar to those found in 60 dead seals and 75 diseased ones, most of them ring seals, that were discovered in July last year on the north coast. "The seal, determined to be a yearling, exhibited almost total hair loss and nodular, ulcerated scabbed skin sores," Kathy Burek-Huntington, a veterinary pathologist part of an international group of experts working on the disease, was quoted as saying. "These sores are consistent with the disease process we have been seeing in the ice seals in the North Slope and Bering Strait areas." Scientists last month ruled out that the illness could have been caused by radiation from the nuclear disaster last year at Japan’s Daiichi Fukushima power plant. The dead seals discovered last year showed lesions on hind flippers and in their mouths. Some suffered from hair loss and irritated skin around the nose and eyes. Post-mortem examinations found fluid in lungs, white spots on livers and abnormal growth in brains.

[link to hisz.rsoe.hu]

What do you all think? Does not really say why radiation was ruled out.