The volume entitled "Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises" in the Smithsonian Handbooks series suggests that the Chukchi and western Beaufort Seas (i.e. north of the Bering Strait) have been traditional parts of the northern feeding grounds of gray whales.  But perhaps they are indeed becoming more numerous off the north shore of Alaska, to the displeasure of the Inupiat.

One would think that professional whalers such as the Inupiat should be able to distinguish gray whales from bowhead whales at some distance.  Bowheads lack the hump and "knuckled" back of gray whales.  The blow is taller, and is shaped into a much more distinct V.  And the color is darker.  Still, I guess even the slightest delay has its cost.

It is remarkable that the gray whales seem to be altering their traditional migration patterns, in order to adapt to new conditions.  This possibly should be considered a datum bespeaking an impressive degree of intelligence.  And apparently they are especially appealing to human observers, being curious and even friendly.  Let us hope that they persist through this difficult, "skinny" period.

We do not have gray whales in the North Atlantic.  But we used to.  Late last year, when the news broke that the Baiji, the river dolphin of the Yangtze River, seemed to have finally gone extinct, it was observed that that was the first cetacean to have gone extinct as a result of human activity, and the second marine mammal, after the Steller's sea cow.  While that may be true, if we consider a species as a whole, it is also true, and just as much a serious extinction event, that the North Atlantic population of gray whales, those friendly, trusting creatures, were extinct by some time in the 18th century.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Scientists have been mystified by the Humbolt Current and warm water invading Alaska, but so far marine life (other than ice-based species) appear to be fine and the Alaska fisheries appear to be "sustainable" according to recent scientific research.

Any scientists would have to take into consideration domoic acid, feedstocks, hypoxia, and many other variables to understand the plight of the gray whale.  To simply say IT IS THE FAULT OF GLOBAL WARMING without even a proof of concept is the worst possible thing you could ever say.

Man, sometimes you folks are amazingly daft.
sammie

Onward through the fog

Hey, Sam: Yes, I agree with you, and this is the same point I was trying to make in the thread on droughts and short-term events used to prove things.   To some extent we have established our own fear-based propaganda machine, in which everything is blamed on anthropogenic climate change.  Our Occam's Razor has gotten real dull, and our eyes have gotten unnecessarily large, while not seeing any more clearly.  While global warming is real, blaming everything on it misses the point of and thwarts objective science, and it hurts us in the long run.  

The caution about anecdotes being used to reach conclusions needs to be kept in mind in every situation.  The whales in question could be subject to local prey shortages, competition, parasite loads, toxic conditions, etc., or several other things.  

It makes good press, since we love our charismatic megafauna, and I do, too, but any real alarm needs to wait until real causes are found.

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

Change must be rather severe before entire migratory and eating patterns change.  I heard about skinny whales in the news two days ago, as well.  So, why is this story so important?  Two reasons that I can see.

1. Changes of this magnitude, and in the remote oceanic north to boot, are rare, and rapid in this case.  It is not like deciding to change your shirt and doing it all in two minutes - it should take long periods to see a shift in species locations and habits such as this.

2. All things are more connected than we may see at first, superficial glance.  For example, if this is due to a large temperature shift in the Bering see, what will this do to ocean currents?  What will it do to other animals in the region?  Ultimately we humans are part of nature's food chain, and require some basics in order to live, and even more in order to live "well".  To me, this whale news is equivalent to the sensitive canary used in coal mines; when they became ill or died, it was a warning to the miners about the air they were breathing.  Well, maybe we should try really hard to learn from these giant "canaries" - it may help save us from a worse disaster.

You are right, you and I have not seen a study of the actual changes of amount of prey in the Bering Sea.  On the other hand, we should be paying attention even to stories such as this that are not fully explained, because of the multiplicity of such occurences on land and sea, and because there is evidence that time is short and that we are on a large ship that will be slow to turn around once we more clearly see the oncoming proverbial iceberg.

David Alexander
PlanetThoughts.org
Love your Planet.

It would be irresponsible of me to imply that we shouldn't care about declining health or population of a species.  Quite the contrary.   The case referred to here needs to be addressed, but if the larger issues that led to this decline are not addressed, we will have achieved or learned nothing, and we will in fact have deluded ourselves yet again.  

I was reminded the other night when E.O. Wilson was interviewed by Bill Moyers, that science has described maybe 10% of the species on Earth.  This 10% is the easy part: the large interesting plants and animals, and the economically, nutritionally, medically important.  These are also largely the ones we wish to protect, by default since they are the only ones we know.  At the same time though, countless (literally) anonymous (literally) species are disappearing due to human actions.

And yet, as the perceptive and thoughtful Canis has pointed out, the Baiji dolphin is extinct, in contemporary historical times.  Ironic that its specific epithet "vexillifer" translates as "flag bearer".  Science has teased out the mechanisms of modern (i.e., human-caused) extinction in great detail, yet the rapacious Chinese have committed this act of sheer selfishness and ignorance.  But we shouldn't blame them too much; they learned from the best: they learned from the West!  We/they knew it was happening, we/they knew how it was happening, we/they knew how to reverse the trend, we/they knew what the inevitable end would be, if not addressed.   The record speaks loudly and clearly.

The alarm we should be sounding and responding to is the loss of ecosystems, biomes, biogeographic regions worldwide.  These are the units of the biotic and abiotic environment that are at stake, and they contain the countless anonymous species we should protect.  I can't find or remember its author, but the statement 'we will only save what we know' is absolutely true, although no guarantee of success.  The Baiji dolphin is a stark reminder here.  

We must have a combination of academics and activism in our alarm and the response.  Global warming has become the 'cause du jour' but cannot be the only focus.  Fundamental comprehensive change--improvement--in our lifestyle, primarily in the affluent population in the West, going far beyond GW, is absolutely needed.  

On the other hand, if we merely use cases such as the grey whales described here to prove GW, and do little or nothing to address the underlying issues, we are again treating a species as a tool for selfish misguided human ends.  

David
Sustainability For Life

Messages done with sustainable energy, with Wind and Sun!

According to Ken Weiss's reporting, the animals that we need to pay closest attention to are not so much the gray whales, playing the part of the canary, but the amphipods, the bottom-dwelling crustaceans on which the whales feed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphipod

Crustaceans have been called "the insects of the sea," and apparently these benthic amphipods are usually very numerous and reproduce in great numbers, though the Wikipedia article does not say much at all about the kind that the gray whales eat.

Evidently there is still a great deal that we need to learn:

• Are the numbers of benthic amphipods in the Bering Sea really declining, as suspected?;

• If so, is it because they are being eaten up by fish that are moving from the south into the warming water?;

• Or, is it that those fish are eating the nutrients that the amphipods depend on?;

• Or, is it that the warming water is having a negative effect on the algae that provide the nutrients?;

• Or, is it that the temperature increase is itself directly harmful to the amphipods' bodily structure or metabolism?

I sort of follow you, SD, that there may be emerging lately a tendency to blame too many biodiversity-related problems on global warming.  Actually, though, it seems that scientists are still quite aware of other, more obvious threats to biodiversity, such as pollution, over-fishing and other forms of habitat destruction.  I do not think that anyone is blaming the extinction of the Baiji on global warming.

And yet, in far northern and southern latitudes, it seems to make sense to pay close attention to anything that may be an effect of warming.  The situation of the polar bears is by now well known.

Something analogous is happening in Antarctica, where melting ice, or shifting patterns of ice, are altering the geography of where krill are to be found, with grave consequences for Adelie penguins.

It is interesting that one of Grist's recently acclaimed "15 Green Movies," "Happy Feet," has little or nothing to say about global warming's effect on the animals of Antarctica.  The two big forms of environmental destruction that it focuses on are over-fishing and pollution (in the form of the plastic beverage-can holder that one of the penguins has got caught around his neck).  These are undeniably very serious problems (though we perhaps associate the floating six-pack holder more with pelagic birds such as albatrosses, and sea turtles, than with penguins).  But it is curious that the environmental issue that we have been most interested lately to study in Antarctica, global warming, does not make an appearance in a movie which was denounced by many right-wing parents as left-wing, Al-Gore-ish propaganda.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

1.  while Global Warming IS having an effect on surface temperatures, melting ice should lower ocean temperatures - a fact of thermodynamics

2.  It is well known that the various currents off the Pacific can be disrupted by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which can cause species to decline very quickly.

3.  A massive algal bloom off the California coast has already impacted thousands of otters, seal, dolphin, and marine birds.  The algae is similar to Red Tide in that domoic acid is produced, which can cause respiratory and even neural damage.  Stranded animals appear weak and "skinny."

4.  Whales other than baleen whales (that strain water for plankton and krill) are opportunists that will eat crustaceans, fish, and especially squid.  We know that crab and fish stocks have declined along the West Coast but the squid population does not seem to be as affected.

5.  Off Oregon and other spots along the Pacific, upwelling has caused large "dead zones" of black hypoxic water in which nothing can grow, since the algae has consumed all of the oxygen.  This is not related to ENSO but seems to grow every year.

6.  Many of the pods of whales of which we speak reproduce in the waters off Baja and the Sea of Cortez.  It could well be that there is an environmental stressor down there, such as pollution, lack of food, too many darn tour boats, or some other cause.

7.  As we have seen with the Right Whale, ship strikes are thought to be more common than previously thought - and it appears that whales may be attracted to ships for some reason as well.  

8.  The US Navy has been conductive some very powerful low frequency sonar and radio wave tests in the Pacific.  These "war games" include coordination of missile firings and use of support submarines.  The missile boys are in Point Mogu and the submarine boys are based in San Diego.

9.  Whale necropsy studies do not seem to point to any single or combination of causes.  I am familiar with stories of at least four whales that recently washed up on beaches in the NE and several dozen that died in the Gulf near the upper Texas coast.  All specimens were considered very old, decomposed, and too degraded to draw any scientific conclusions; virus studies have not been published to my knowledge.

10.  Surface temperatures do not affect whales.  Their food can be several miles down deep in the ocean where it is extremely cold.  While it is true some whale species are specific to Arctic zones, the historical record of whale landings of the 1800's indicates that most were actually caught in equatorial and subtropical latitudes.

Also, I see what you are saying about melting ice sending the temperature of the water column beneath it down down down as the recently frozen water descends, so scratch the last of my questions in my "amphipods, walruses, sea ducks" comment.

I do not think anyone is suggesting that a change in water temperature is directly affecting the comfort of whales, or of polar bears and penguins either, though possibly it is having some effect on fish.

More important is what is happening to the benthic amphipods, and to the amphipods' food.  If the algae and other plankton which they eat require there to be a solid frozen ocean surface beneath which to grow, then the loss of that surface ice will presumably mean that there are fewer algae growing, and so less food for amphipods.  And the next step obviously is that there will be fewer amphipods, and so less food for gray whales.

But had there been surface ice before in the Bering Sea?  Clearly we do not have all the relevant data.

An important observation that you do not say anything about, Sammie, is the remarkable increase in numbers of gray whales migrating all the way to the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas.  Surely it is reasonable to suspect that that has something to do with climate change and the warming Arctic.

But I agree with you that animals such as the gray whales, who migrate huge distances in the course of the year -- and who are not showing a decline in numbers yet, as was observed, and at present only 10% are looking "skinny" -- , as well as the eider ducks, who also go on long migrations, may be meeting with difficulties of many sorts, not related to global warming, in the course of their travels.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

Ice worms are really cool, having their own form of anti-freeze that permits them to feed on organics in the ice (there is a lot of dirt in ice).  Upwelling from several thousand feet of water in the arctic brings in nutrients that support millions of inhabitants under the ice floes.  Thousands of seals feed on the fish by creating ice holes to dive for the fish ... and a few bears eat the seals.  It is a wonder that anything grows there, but such ice formations actually support life in some of the MOST PRODUCTIVE WATERS IN THE WORLD.

Take away that shelf ice or whatever you call it, and the arctic seas could well go sterile.  No worms, plankton, whales, seals, bear, no nothing.   Some say the only blessing is that the cod may do better but I don't think they have a clue as to a collapse in the food chain.  Maybe the feed will just change and it won't be so sterile as I imagine, with invasive snakeheads, lionfish, and pirhana.  

Something will happen within our lifetimes, we just don't know yet what it is.  /sammie

Onward through the fog