Arctic Weather Pattern Likely to Push Arctic Sea Ice Extent to Record Lows, Again Forcing Thousands of Walruses Ashore | WWF Climate Blog
Declining Sea Ice Disrupts Arctic Ecosystems, including Walruses and Polar BearsFlashback: 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
Animals that spend much of their time on the ice, such as walruses and polar bears, are literally having the ice melt from underneath them; and remaining sea ice drifts away from preferred feeding areas.
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.2009: Global Warming Could Reverse a Walrus Comeback - NYTimes.com
For the moment, the Pacific walrus remains abundant, numbering at least 200,000 by some accounts, double the number in the 1950s.
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