Climate change is melting Arctic sea ice, leaving animals that depend on it high and dry. Marine mammals like ringed seals have to find new areas to give birth, raise their young, and haul out. And now, experts say, these animals must deal with another woe—emerging diseases. Ice-free parts of the Arctic seem to be opening up new areas for more than just shipping companies. A new species of parasite, Sarcocystis pinnipedi, is on the move south, infecting gray seals and killing off as much as 20 percent of a population on a single island, researchers reported at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting on February 13.

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