Omen? Scientists dismayed as millions of aquatic animals swarm Antarctica
Posted on April 28, 2011 by The Extinction Protocol
April 28, 2011 – ANTARCTICA – Scientists are dismayed by the record number of whales swarming Antarctica. The sightings, made in waters still largely ice-free deep into austral autumn, suggest the previously little-studied bays are important late-season foraging grounds for the endangered whales. But they also highlight how rapid climate change is affecting the region. The Duke University-led team tracked the super-aggregation of krill and whales during a six-week expedition to Wilhelmina Bay and surrounding waters in May 2009. They published their findings today (April 27) in the online science journal PLoS ONE. “Such an incredibly dense aggregation of whales and krill has never been seen before in this area at this time of year,” says Duke marine biologist Douglas Nowacek. Most studies have focused on whale foraging habitats located in waters farther offshore in austral summer. Nowacek and his colleagues observed 306 humpback whales – or about 5.1 whales per square kilometer, the highest density ever recorded – in Wilhelmina Bay. They measured the krill biomass at about 2 million tons. Small, floating fragments of brash ice covered less than 10 percent of the bay. The team returned in May 2010 and recorded similar numbers. Smaller but still higher-than-normal counts were also reported in neighboring Andvord Bay. Advancing winter sea ice used to cover much of the peninsula’s bays and fjords by May, protecting krill and forcing humpback whales to migrate elsewhere to find food, Nowacek says. But rapid climate change in the area over the last 50 years has significantly reduced the extent, and delayed the annual arrival, of the ice cover, says Nowacek, who is the Repass-Rodgers University Associate Professor of Conservation Technology. “The lack of sea ice is good news for the whales in the short term, providing them with all-you-can-eat feasts as the krill migrate vertically toward the bay’s surface each night. But it is bad news in the long term for both species, and for everything else in the Southern Ocean that depends on krill,” says Ari S. Friedlaender, co-principal investigator on the project and a research scientist at Duke. –Physics.org
Condolences to you and your poor neighbours. 
