WWF thinks you're stupid: If thousands of walruses with young are seen on shore this time of year, we're supposed to take it as evidence that CO2 is dangerous

USGS Confirms Thousands of Walruses Hauling-Out on Alaska's Northwest Coast as Sea Ice Rapidly Retreats | WWF Climate Blog

Alaska Public Radio Network (APRN) reported on Thursday (2 Sep 2010) that "for only the third time in human memory, walruses have started to congregate in large numbers on Alaska’s Northwest coast. Earlier this week, the animals began hauling out on shore, after the sea ice they depend on for foraging disappeared." ...

We reported last Monday (30 Aug 2010) that an animated map from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), showing the daily locations of tagged walruses and sea ice distribution in the Chukchi sea, indicated that walruses were increasingly moving from offshore locations to "haul outs" along the Alaska shoreline as sea ice disappeared from the area. (see Walruses Again Being Forced Ashore as Arctic Sea Ice Retreats).

According to the APRN report, overflights confirmed that large numbers of walruses were hauling-out along the Alaska shoreline. Chad Jay, a research scientist with the USGS in Anchorage said "it's going on full force right now. " Exact counts are not available, but Jay estimated that thousands already had gathered. A lot of them are females with their young.

Walrus encyclopedia topics | Reference.com

In the non-reproductive season (late summer and fall) the walrus tends to migrate away from the ice and form massive aggregations of tens of thousands of individuals on rocky beaches or outcrops. The nature of the migration between the reproductive period and the summer period can be a rather long distance and dramatic. In late spring and summer, for example, several hundred thousand Pacific Walruses migrate from the Bering sea into the Chukchi sea through the relatively narrow Bering Strait.