Alaska Man Contracts ‘Seal Finger’ in What Officials Are Calling a Medical First

In fall 2024, a 29-year-old Alaskan hunter showed up at a local urgent care in Anchorage with a swollen, infected finger. At first, his case didn’t seem out of the ordinary. He was given topical and oral prescriptions and sent on his way.

Days later, the man was hospitalized with fever and tachycardia (an abnormally fast heart rate). Exploratory surgery showed damage to the tendon and septic arthritis. Once his fever was reduced and lab cultures came back clear, he was discharged with a hefty dose of antibiotics. But the infection was far from resolved, according to a recent bulletin from the Alaska Department of Health, which notes how, weeks later, he was diagnosed with a severe case of “seal finger.”

A Difficult Diagnosis

Initially, the hunter seemed to have a common bacterial infection. The week before he visited urgent care, the man had accidentally cut his finger while skinning a brown bear. This isn’t an uncommon injury among hunters, and bacteria is plentiful on wild animals like brown bears, which often scavenge washed-up marine mammals and eat copious amounts of salmon. I know of one biologist who punctured his thumb while extracting a tooth from a bear skull, and he nearly had to be hospitalized 24 hours later. (With antibiotics, though, his case of cellulitis cleared up.)

In the case of the 29-year-old hunter, however, his pain and swelling didn’t get better. He returned to the hospital 40 days after he had been discharged. Further examination revealed that while cultures of his infection were negative, significant bone and cartilage degradation had occurred. The answer came only after DNA sequencing, which identified Mycoplasma phocimorsus as the pathogen. 

This bacteria, which was only recently identified, will not show up in cultures and it doesn’t respond to many antibiotics. The Alaska Department of Health states that this bacteria requires specific treatment, including with the antibiotic doxycycline, which is sometimes prescribed in suspected cases of seal finger among Native seal hunters in rural Alaska. 

Seal Finger Has Been Around a While

Although Mycoplasma phocimorsus was first identified in an Alaska Native seal hunter in 2015, the condition it causes isn’t new. And while health officials point out that this is the first documented case associated with a brown bear (the other known Alaska case was contracted directly from a seal) it’s likely that numerous cases have gone undocumented over the years because of how difficult the condition is to diagnose.

“They’ve known about Seal Finger for a long time,” says Skip Scott, a Fairbanks resident and taxidermist who almost certainly contracted the infection himself in the early 1960s.

“Back when anyone could hunt seals, I just barely nicked my left index finger while skinning a seal on Afognak Island,” Scott says. “The tip of my knife punctured the pad at the tip of my finger. It bled a little, I washed it out as best I could, and continued with the hunting trip.”

After returning home a few days later, Scott went to the doctor, who thought it was a normal infection. Around eight to ten days after the incident, however, the swelling was out of control.

“My left hand was so swollen it literally looked like a catcher’s mitt. I was admitted to the hospital where they pumped me full of antibiotics, but it didn’t help the infection.”

Scott tells me that doctors at the time were aware of seal finger, but that the only effective method for treatment had historically been amputation. That was a decision he was presented with while in the hospital. Fortunately, his orthopedic surgeon was able to avoid amputation by opening his hand and removing the necrotic tendon and tissue, replacing it with a piece of tendon from his arm. 

“They literally scraped everything out of my finger and palm of my hand except the skin and bones,” Scott says.

It took nearly two years and multiple surgeries, along with painful steps in the healing process, to fully restore function in his hand.

“People should know to be very careful when dealing with anything from a marine environment, even while fishing. There’s lots of ways to get a nasty infection. And if you suspect one, you should get on it right away.” 

How to Protect Yourself

While this is the first known case of seal finger associated with bears, and not seals, it’s not entirely surprising. Alaska’s coastal brown bears source a great deal of their food from the shores and beaches. They commonly feed on washed-up carcasses of seals, sea lions, and whales. The bulletin notes that the hunter’s knife had been in contact with the bear’s mouth before he was cut, though officials aren’t, and can’t be, certain that’s where the bacteria came from.

As I’ve seen on Afognak myself, bears will sometimes actively hunt seals by ambushing their haul-out spots. The takeaway is that anyone should operate carefully and treat infection risks seriously in marine environments.

If you’re skinning or handling bears, it also makes sense to wear protective nitrile gloves at a minimum. I’ve found that while they don’t offer great cut protection, they help keep your hands cleaner while allowing good dexterity. The Alaska Department of Health recommends wearing cut-resistant gloves over nitrile gloves, though that’s not always practical. 

Read Next: I Fought Off a Brown Bear with My Fishing Rod, and Other Close Calls While Living in Remote Alaska

Even if you’re not a hunter, it pays to be careful in these environments to prevent or quickly treat infections. The man in this case was able to recover after accurate diagnosis and the proper treatment, and hopefully awareness of this hazard will help speed up diagnoses in the future.