Gray Whales "Skin & Bones" - Biologists Report At Least 10% Of Population Showing Malnutrition Sign

[hatrack]

Researchers off Mexico's Pacific coast have observed what might be a case of global warming's effects in the far north: gray whales returning to calving grounds malnourished.

EDIT

Gray whales feed on small creatures such as amphipods, a small, shrimp-like crustacean, and tube worms found in bottom sediments. The whales have 130 to 180 overlapping plates of frayed baleen hanging from each side of the upper jaw. When they feed, gray whales dive to the ocean bottom, roll on their sides and draw bottom sediments and water into their mouths. As they close their mouths, they expel water and sediment through the baleen plates, which trap the food on the inside near the tongue to be swallowed.

Perryman would be more worried about the health of the gray whale population, he said, if the observations of skinny whales were accompanied by strandings, a term scientists use not just to describe whales that become disoriented and end up beached, but also whales that die of starvation, disease or parasites and float to shore.

In a normal year, there are about 30 such reports. That number has not jumped in the last two years, Perryman said. That's in contrast to roughly nine years ago, when there was a precipitous decline. The whale population reached a modern peak of 26,000 animals in 1997. But in 1999, the federal government recorded about 270 strandings, and a year later, more than 300. Calf production fell and the population dropped to 19,000 animals. Some speculate that gray whale numbers simply overtaxed the carrying capacity of the feeding grounds. Swartz, who started studying gray whales in 1977, said researchers initially suspected the crash was due to short-term weather phenomena, a warm year of surface water associated with a strong El Nino event that interrupted normal cycles of plankton production followed by unusually cold water the next year associated with a La Nina event.

EDIT

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/9278175p-9192987c.html

[Whoa_Nelly]

1. More cries of help from our planet via our oceans

at the expense of these beautiful mammals. :cry:

[kestrel91316]

2. I don't know what other outcome we should expect when have

strip-mined the oceans with dredging and overfishing, and used them as a giant waste disposal site.

http://issues.org/14.3/safina.htm
http://www.animalsvoice.com/PAGES/writes/editorial/news/features/trawling_harm.html
"It has been likened to fishing with a bulldozer"

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/ocean.htm

[byronius]

3. K & R.

[progressoid]

4. Well, that can't be good.

[GliderGuider]

5. and 25% of Balugas

in the St. Laurence River have cancer.

Sorry, I can't cite where I saw this. It was a headline to a story I couldn't bring myself to read.

[Delphinus]

6. You saw it here on DU.

There really are no words to convey what is in my heart right now. :cry:

[hatrack]

7. Not to worry, Glider - it was 25% of the male belugas in the St. Lawrence

So, the incidence might really run as low as 12.5%!

:eyes:

[OneBlueSky]

8. makes me want to cry for our fellow species and how they are being mistreated . . .

and, in many cases, driven to extinction by human avarice . . .