Warming Arctic Is Taking a Toll

[WhiteTara]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401368.html
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 15, 2006; Page A07

The rapid melting of Arctic sea ice appears to be separating walrus young from their mothers, leaving them likely to die at sea, a team of researchers said.

During a two-month cruise off northern Alaska in 2004, a Coast Guard icebreaker came across nine lone walrus calves swimming in the deep waters -- what the scientists called a highly unusual sighting.


This walrus pup alone in the Arctic Ocean, separated from its mother, was a troubling sight for researchers in 2004. (By Phil Alatalo -- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

They report in the journal Aquatic Mammals that the pups most likely fell into the sea when a shelf of sea ice that they lived on with their mothers collapsed because of an influx of unusually warm water.


I hate it that we are killing everything else in our mad rush to suicide. :cry: