Marine Mammal

The ruling comes more than a decade after the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group, first petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the walrus as endangered or threatened.

U.S. researchers are normally restricted to U.S. boundaries. Researcher Paul Conn with NOAA says that the process can be limiting since the polar bears travel between sea ice in both Russia and the United States.

A new study has found evidence connecting the rapid warming of the region with a physical decline in three species of Alaska seals.

The Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are home to a variety of marine mammals, including bearded and ringed seals. Though both species are in relative abundance, long-term projections forecast a threat to the once-extensive sea ice the seals live on.

For subsistence hunters in the northern parts of Alaska, the bowhead whale has been a part of their diet for generations. However, scientists have found that as sea ice has dwindled in Arctic waters, a new predator has moved in to feed on the marine mammals: killer whales.

Since 2007, walruses have been hauling out on land between their hunts. Before then, they’d populate sea ice patches throughout the Arctic. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Andrea Medeiros says that sea ice hasn’t been as reliable in recent years.

Scientists have found evidence that links the decline of sea ice to the emergence of a virus in Arctic marine mammals that has killed thousands of seals in European waters.

“Cameras captured the pilots flying over the haulout and also recorded the animals fleeing into the water,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Andrea Medeiros.

The three seals covered by the unusual mortality event, or UME, are bearded, ringed and spotted seals. Speegle says the Shishmaref and Kotzebue areas have reported the highest number of dead seals.