An estimated $2 million worth of lobsters have been found dead or ill off the coast of Maine in the US this year. Even though some of the animals have bacterial infections, researchers suspect that the mystery infection is not bacterial. Maya Crosby of the University of Maine in Orono says that something else is weakening the animals, which then become more prone to bacterial infection. The illness poses no risk to human health, she says, because any toxins in healthy lobsters are inactivated by cooking.
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