A diseased ringed seal in Alaska is shown in this handout photo released to Reuters October 13, 2011. 
 
 ANCHORAGE, Alaska A mysterious disease, possibly a virus, has afflicted ring seals along Alaska's coast, killing scores of them since July, local and federal agencies said on Thursday. 
 
 The diseased seals have been beaching themselves on the Arctic coastline since July, with numbers picking up in subsequent months, biologists with the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management and other agencies said. 
 
 About 100 of the diseased animals have been found near Barrow, the nation's northernmost community, and half of those have died, the borough biologists reported. 
 
 Elsewhere in the sprawling borough, villagers have reported 146 ringed seals hauling themselves onto beaches, and many of those were diseased, the biologists said. 
 
 Ringed seals rarely come ashore in normal circumstances, spending most of the year in the water or on floating ice, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service. 
 
 Biologists said they believe the illness was caused by a virus. Symptoms include sometimes-bleeding lesions on the hind flippers, irritated skin around the nose and eyes and patchy hair loss on the animals' fur coats. 
 
 They said the mystery outbreak may not be limited to ringed seals. Some dead walruses at Point Hope, a village on Alaska's northwest coast, were found with similar lesions, borough biologists said. 
 
 Local hunters also reported finding skin lesions on two bearded seals, the biologists said. 
 
 Yet identification of the disease remains elusive, and it was not clear that the lesions found on the walruses were from the same disease that has afflicted the ringed seals, said Bruce Woods, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 
 
 "We're kind of in the dark at this point," he said. 
 
 The remote locations and other logistical challenges make it impossible to provide veterinary care to beached animals that are sick, said Jason Herreman, a borough biologist. 
 
 "Seals that are found dead are collected for sampling. Seals that are sick but alive are being left to recover on their own," he said in an e-mail. Samples were being sent to various laboratories in Anchorage and elsewhere, he said. 
 
 Ringed seals, bearded seals and Pacific walruses are all dependent on floating summer sea ice and suffering the impacts of rapid warming in the Arctic, according to federal agencies. 
 
 NOAA has proposed listing Alaska's ringed seals and bearded seals as threatened, and the Fish and Wildlife Service has also designated the Pacific walrus as a candidate for Endangered Species Act protections. 
 
 (Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Cynthia Johnston) ||||| As harbor seals are being born in the Pacific Northwest this time of year, marine mammal advocates up and down the West Coast are urging people not to touch or pick up pups that come up on beaches and shorelines, even if they appear abandoned or injured. 
 
 At least five times this season, well-meaning people have illegally picked up seal pups in Oregon and Washington thinking they were abandoned or needed help, but that interference ultimately resulted in two deaths, said Michael Milstein, a spokesman with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 
 
 State wildlife officials had to euthanize one harbor seal pup last month after a woman picked it up on a beach in Westport, Washington, and apparently carried it back to a house in a shopping tote. The animal was later determined to be unresponsive and lethargic, Milstein said. 
 
 Another couple found a seal pup on the beach in Garibaldi, Oregon, and fearing the animal was alone or abandoned, wrapped the seal in a beach towel, put it in their car and placed it in their shower at home, said Kristin Wilkinson, NOAA’s regional stranding coordinator. Wildlife officers returned that seal to the beach where it was found but the animal was found dead the next day, she said. That couple received a written warning. 
 
 “It is an ongoing issue throughout the entire West Coast,” said Justin Greenman, NOAA’s assistant stranding coordinator for California. In recent years, with high death rates and strandings for sea lions and fur seals off the California coast, there have been some cases of people wanting to pick up and rescue sea lions, he said. 
 
 “We try to get the word out to leave them be,” he added. Selfies with seals or sea lions are also a growing problem. 
 
 Northcoast Marine Mammal Center Director Dr. Dennis Wood said the center used to take in about 60 stranded animals on average every year with about 75 percent of those animals coming from Humboldt County beaches but that average was been going up. 
 
 “It’s been over 100 over the last three years,” he said. 
 
 More animals are getting stranded due to the animals’ food source being pushed farther offshore. 
 
 “There’s been what was called the ‘warm blob,’ an increased temperature off the coast,” Wood said. 
 
 People’s impulse is to rush in and help, but it’s better to let nature run its course, experts say. The risk in taking these animals off the beach is that adult seals may abandon their pups. 
 
 “The best chance they have to survive is to stay wild,” Wilkenson said. 
 
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 Last month, in a case that garnered national attention, a Canadian man and his son loaded a bison calf into their SUV at Yellowstone National Park because they thought it was an abandoned newborn that would die without their help. The calf had to be killed because it couldn’t be reunited with its herd after being handled. 
 
 “This is our Northwest version, apparently,” Milstein said. 
 
 NOAA has launched a “Share the Shore” campaign to remind beachgoers to leave marine mammals alone, to stay at least 100 yards away and reduce other disturbances, such as keeping dogs on leashes. It’s illegal to harass, disturb or try to move young seals or other marine mammals. 
 
 “A huge problem in Humboldt County are dogs off leash that bite pups,” Wood said. 
 
 Wilkinson says they typically see six to 10 illegal animal handling cases a year, but the trend this year is concerning because they’re happening earlier in the season and within a wider area. 
 
 Harbor seal pups are born along the West Coast, typically from February to May in California and from late spring to summer in the Northwest. They use beaches, docks and other shoreline areas to rest, regulate their body temperatures or wait for their mothers, who typically are nearby but may not come near the pups if there are too many people or other disturbances. 
 
 “Most of them don’t actually wash up,” Wood said. “Their mothers leave them on the shore while they fish.” 
 
 While this is the case with harbor seals, California sea lions and elephant seals are a different story, he said. Sea lions and elephant seal pups are larger than harbor seal pups and aren’t left on beaches by their mothers when fishing. If seen on the beach they are usually skinny, small, starving and in need of rescue. Wood advised people who find a seal or sea lion pup on a beach to keep their distance, keep others away and call the marine mammal center seal stranding line at 707-951-4722. 
 
 “We can usually tell from their description what it is,” he said. 
 
 The center will always send out a stranding expert to check on the pups to determine if it actually needs help, Wood said. 
 
 “The farther away you can observe than the better,” he said. “In most cases the animal is fine and just needs to be left alone.” 
 
 Jeff Boehm, executive director of The Marine Mammal Center in Northern California, said so far this year 18 marine mammals have been brought to his center because they were harassed or illegally picked up. Most were eventually released into the wild after being treated but three have died. 
 
 “These animals have an innate charm. When you see one on the beach, they just draw you in. They’re small. They’re vulnerable,” he said, but people should really pause, take a step back and call local authorities who know best what to do with them. 
 
 Northcoast Marine Mammal Center Stranding Coordinator Lynda Stockton didn’t have specific numbers for how many harassed or picked up pups they get in a year from Humboldt County but said, “it happens quite often.” 
 
 She continued with a story of a report the center received last year where a man picked up a pup off a Humboldt County beach by its tail, swung it around and threw it back into the ocean. That pup was able to return to shore but had to be taken to the center to treat two broken flippers, Stockton said. 
 
 To volunteer for the center or find more information visit northcoastmmc.org. 
 
 Hunter Cresswell can be reached at 707-441-0506.
– A mysterious disease is killing seals along Alaska's Arctic coast, and officials fear it might spread to other countries—and other species. Scores of dead or severely weakened ringed seals with telltale skin lesions and hair loss have been found along the coastline over the last few months, Reuters reports. Tissue samples from the seals have been sent to labs around the country, but experts have been unable to identify the disease, or determine whether a virus or bacteria is causing it. Seal-hunting season is about to begin, and "I'm scared they might pass it on one way or another and the whole ocean could be affected," an official in the far north of the state tells the Alaska Dispatch. Walruses have been found with similar lesions, although it's not clear whether they are suffering from the same disease, and biologists have spotted polar bears preying on the weakened seals. Click to see photos of the afflicted creatures.