Antibiotic Resistance of Bacteria in Two Marine Mammal Species, Harbor Seals and Harbor Porpoises, Living in an Urban Marine Ecosystem, the Salish Sea, Washington State, USA

* Correspondence: stephanie@marine-med.com Antibiotic Resistance of Bacteria in Two Marine Mammal Species, Harbor Abstract: The pervasive use of antibiotics in human medicine, veterinary medicine, and agriculture Seals and Harbor Porpoises, Living in can result in a significant increase in the spread and environmental persistence of antibiotic resistance an Urban Marine Ecosystem, the in marine ec. [...] The objective of this study was to evaluate the presence and distribution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in Salish Sea harbor seals and harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena), with specific goals to describe the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, determine differences in resistance between and within the two species, and describe geographic patterns. [...] The index was calculated as the ratio of the number of resistant antibiotics to which an isolate is resistant to the total number of antibiotics to which it was tested. [...] Oceans 2021, 2 99 The influence of anthropogenic activities in aquatic environments, and on their nearshore sediments and soils, may amplify the generation of new antibiotic resistance genes and the spread of resistant bacteria and have serious ramifications on environmental and public health [62,63]. [...] The lack of spatial trends in resistance may reflect the level of sampling, spatial use by the animals sampled, or the complex state of ecosystem connectivity and estuarine exchange flow within the Salish Sea and its coastal shoreline.