Baby Walruses Drowning because of Melting Ice

In a recent post (In America, Global Warming doesn't even register) we quoted "Getting global warming is too much of an intellectual process. Perhaps pictures of drowning polar bears (which we are trying to find) will move people but even there, people will need to believe that those drownings are due to our failure to build cleaner power plants and cars." Well, there may not be pictures of drowning polar bears but there are of drowning walruses. A recent study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution reports " an unprecedented number of unaccompanied and possibly abandoned walrus calves in the Arctic Ocean, where melting sea ice may be forcing mothers to abandon their pups as the mothers follow the rapidly retreating ice edge north." One researcher said "We were on a station for 24 hours, and the calves would be swimming around us crying. We couldn't rescue them" All pointing out that changing ice patterns are killing animals that live on the ice- as it retreats it is over deeper water and the walruses cannot dive deep enough to find food. They may not get as many cuteoverload points as a polar bear, but they are drowning and there appears to be a direct corelation to global warming. ::Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution thanks, tipster marc


New to TreeHugger?

treehugger on phone
treehugger slideshows