Unlike the two previous events, a historic loss of Arctic sea ice could be to blame for the latest gray whale die-off. That’s because sea ice hosts a carpet of algae on its underside, which decays and showers the seabed with food for bottom-dwellers, including the whales’ preferred crustaceans.
“With less ice, you get less algae, which is worse for the gray whale prey,” Stewart said. Melting sea ice also frees up passage for strong currents that sweep away the sediment and leaves bottom-dwelling crustaceans and other creatures homeless. “All of these factors are converging to reduce the quality and availability of the food [gray whales] rely on,” he said.
Climate change might be the reason this mortality event is dragging on for longer than the previous two, Stewart said. “What we’re seeing is much more of a bumpy ride in response to highly variable and rapidly changing ocean conditions,” he said.
Didn’t see that OP had already written a comment with the explanation, please excuse me.
It strikes me as a very precarious balance that too much sea ice prevents them feeding for half the year, and too little sea ice prevents them from feeding the other half of the year.
Didn’t see that OP had already written a comment with the explanation, please excuse me.
If you are referring to
Three mass mortality events have struck a population of gray whales off the west coast of North America since the 1980s, and scientists have linked them to changing conditions in the Arctic.
That’s just the description field in the article itself that Lemmy grabbed, not something OP wrote
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