by This year, dozens of gray whales die again in the waters of the Pacific Ocean, and the climate change caused by humans could be to blame, say scientists.
At least 70 whales have died on the Baja California peninsula in Mexico since the beginning of the year, said marine scientist Dr. Steven Swartz, said the marine scientist The Los Angeles Times this week. Swartz ‘Gray Whale Research in Mexico – an international team of researchers that study the whale in Laguna San Ignacio – have been watching the gentle giants since the 1970s.
He noticed that in Laguna San Ignacio only five mother and calf pairs were identified, where translating whales gather.
“In the Winterbreeding and Calinglagoons Ofbaja California, however, the number of female calf pairs have been the lowest since the beginning of our frequency surveys in this winter aggregation and the breeding areas in 2006, which indicates that a major decline in the reproductive capacity of this population in recent years during the unusual reporting event” A year of his group from his group was.
The results of Swartz in relation to the mortality and reproduction of gray whales occur, since in the San Francisco Bay Area died north to Alaska and its feeding areas in the San Francisco Bay during their migration. One of the whales was described by the marine mammalian center as emaciated.
Remarkably, the number of whale strands increases when the whales go north to the California Academy of Sciences in March and May.
The recent beaching also follows an unusual death event that was explained in 2019 when hundreds of gray whales of the eastern North Pacific along the USA are coated on the US ocean and atmospheric management that walnut autopsies were found as a common cause of death. However, the cause of the deaths was never finally determined and the investigation was closed in 2023 when the number of beaching fell. Earlier research published this year showed that earlier mass deaths were bound by the loss of the Arctic sea ice.
Last winter, the lowest values for arctic winter ice were recorded for Arctic Winter Sea ice. Sea cover can block the whales of the whales, but a loss of sea ice, in which algae accommodate the whale -eat, could be responsible for population hits, Joshua Stewart, Associate Professor at Oregon State University and author of this study The independent.
“It doesn’t feel too much for me,” he said about the recent deaths of gray whales and added that they are connected to migration patterns.
The whales travel about 6,000 miles along the Pacific coast to the Arctic, where they feed in the flat pool and in the sea floor. You are looking for small crustaceans that live in the sediment. However, the health of these ecosystems is dictated by algae that grow on the underside of the sea ice.
When the algae dies, it sinks and introduces nutrients into the sea floor and initiates them again. The fertilized ecosystems attract migration types from all over the world. But if the algae does not make it to the sea floor thanks to the earlier ice melting, their nutrients are released closer to the surface. Ultimately, there is less food for the gray whales.
“And these arctic ecosystems are among the fastest warm ecosystems in the world and they currently have really profound change-over-regime shifts that move from this benthic productivity to more water column productivity that could be good for some other types of whale, but seems to be extremely bad for gray.
Gray whales have been much less influenced by human effects such as vascular attacks than other large whale species, as Stewart found that federal research is of crucial importance for understanding all factors that influence the almost 50 feet long creatures.
“So it seems that almost all population fluctuations of conditions for their feeding reasons are driven in the Arctic. And some of them are a natural variability,” he said.
While gray whales are adaptable and have experienced earlier climatic changes – although nothing as quickly as the current changes – said Stewart, that there has been a “failure failure” since 2019 and a decline in frequency. Skinny Wale stops investing energy in reproduction and the birth rate is falling strongly.
“We have had exceptionally low reproductive rates in the past six years in the past six years. And that is the difference here that this effect takes on. It is not a short -term variability that we have seen in these previous mortality events. This time it is consistent. The population is decreasing. Food to support as many gray whales five or ten years ago,” he said.
Stewart said the status of gray whales was a “harbinger” of what kind of sea will come.
“In my opinion, at this point we see the effects of climate change on some of these large, charismatic, economically important, culturally important species that we as a society appreciate through a great value and which we have to deal with massive declines due to our actions,” he said.
