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A Bit of Sand and Sun

Grey seals congregate and relax on Billingsgate Shoal, near Wellfleet, Mass. WHOI biologists Andrea Bogomolni and Michael Moore have joined colleagues in screening seals and other marine animals and their scat for the presence of influenza, Brucella, Leptospira, Giardia and Cryptosporidium and other traces of disease that they might be picking from contact with humans and their waste. Bogomolni and Moore are also active collaborators with the Cape Cod Stranding Network, a group that rehabilitates (when possible) and studies marine mammals who have dangerously beached themselves or become entangled with fishing gear and other manmade objects. (Photo by Jim Canavan, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)