In what’s being touted as a medical first, a 29-year-old hunter from Anchorage, Alaska, contracted a rare bacterial infection known as "Seal Finger" not from a seal, but from skinning a brown bear on the Alaska Peninsula.
The story began in September 2024, when a notably healthy man in his late 20s embarked on a brown bear hunt near Ivanof Bay on the Alaska Peninsula. While skinning the animal, he did something that many of us do and sustained a laceration on his left pinkie finger. According to a bulletin released last week by the epidemiology section of the Alaska Division of Public Health, his hand and knife had also come into contact with the bear's mouth, though there was no reported exposure to the intestinal tract.
Thinking nothing initially of the knick on his finger, it wasn’t until seven days later that the hunter sought care at an urgent care clinic in Anchorage, presenting redness, painful swelling, and aching over the proximal interphalangeal joint in his pinkie finger. Initial treatments included oral trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole and topical mupirocin, but the symptoms persisted. By day five of illness, he developed fever and tachycardia, leading to immediate hospitalization.
The frustrating infection proved resistant to standard approaches, including broad-spectrum intravenous antibiotics like ceftriaxone, piperacillin/tazobactam, and vancomycin. On day six, exploratory surgery revealed septic arthritis and necrotic extensor tendon disruption in the PIP joint. Gram stains and cultures (aerobic, anaerobic, and fungal) came back negative, complicating the situation for local doctors. Soon enough, his fever resolved, and he was discharged on oral antibiotics for 21 days.
However, by day 46, persistent swelling and MRI evidence of osteomyelitis (bone infection) called for a repeat surgery. Intraoperative findings showed extensive cartilage and bone damage but it wasn't until day 53 that broad-range 16S rDNA sequencing of debrided tissue identified the culprit as mycoplasma phocimorsus, also known as “Seal Finger”.
An earlier case of Seal Finger from a seal bite | Canadian Journal of Plastic Surgery
The patient then completed a six-week course of oral doxycycline, which proved effective and by January 2025, he had recovered without relapse, though some limitation in finger mobility remained.
"Seal finger," first described in 1907 among Norwegian seal hunters, is a painful musculoskeletal infection caused by mycoplasma phocimorsus—a bacterium whose name derives from Latin for "seal bite." Typically associated with handling seals in Indigenous hunting, aquariums, veterinary work, or field research, it can lead to severe swelling, septic arthritis, and osteomyelitis if untreated.
This case marks the first documented transmission from a brown bear and only the second from a non-seal animal, following a 2013 cat scratch in Denmark.
“This patient hadn’t had anything to do with seals,” Dr. Benjamin Westley, the Anchorage infectious disease specialist who treated the hunter, noted. He went on to speculate that bears, as opportunistic feeders on beaches, could acquire the bacterium from infected seals or even serve as reservoirs.
Experts like Dr. Westley attributed such cases to increased human-wildlife interactions and went on to advise hunters to wear heavy gloves (rubber or nitrile under cut-resistant ones) when handling animals, wash hands thoroughly, and manage wounds promptly.
