"Bear, bear, why are you sad?" The seal patted the polar bear on the shoulder and asked.
The polar bear cried, "Global warming, rising sea level, something is going to happen …"
The seal mused, "Are you worried about the decrease of glaciers? Solar radiation? Or is the fish swimming deep and the rice is not enough? "
The polar bear wiped her tears and said, "No, my daughter-in-law suddenly asked me today, if the glacier melts, your mother and I will fall into the water at the same time. Who will you save first?"
If the above is a humorous story, then the real climate warming is a severe and cold realistic dilemma. Perhaps the legal hunting in the world today is the biggest factor that directly threatens the survival of seals, but the warming of climate change is an untimely bomb that will soon lead to the extinction of seals and even the entire marine life species.
Why do seals stay on ice floes?
When it comes to seals, everyone will think of their rounded figure and cute appearance lying on ice floes, but why do seals like to stay on ice floes so much?
Spotted Seals on Broken Ice (Source/Director Panjin Tian Jiguang, China Spotted Seal Reserve)
Ice floes are very important for many marine mammals living near the poles. Ice floes are not only a shelter for seals, but also a place for them to rest and hunt nearby. If there is no floating ice in an area, seals must travel long distances to other coasts to find floating ice. This process will be a great challenge to the physical strength of seals, and at the same time it will reduce the possibility of their survival in harsh environment.
Ice floes are a relatively safe place for seals, which can keep them away from predators, especially in the breeding season of seals. Many seals will give birth and raise their cubs on the ice floe. When the baby seals grow up, they will stay alone on the ice floe, while their mothers will go to the neighborhood for food.
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the decrease of sea ice means the decrease of ringed seals’ habitat. The rupture of the ice may lead to premature birth of mother seals and the mortality of newborn cubs will also increase. If autumn and winter were quite warm, the ice would become soft and thin. If baby seals were born on such floating ice, there would probably not be enough time for weaning, which would lead to their inability to survive.
Adult seals also need to stay on the ice floes to avoid predators, and at the same time, it is convenient for them to feed. Small crustaceans and fish often shuttle around the edge of ice floes, which are the food sources of harp seals. These "glutinous rice cakes" stay on the floating ice and can easily prey. However, if the amount of sea ice decreases, it means food shortage.
There are 6 species of seals in the Arctic and 4 species in the Antarctic. Among them, ringed seals, bearded seals and Weddell seals all depend on floating ice, and they live on and around floating ice almost all their lives.
It is precisely because of this dependence on ice floes that people have increased the protection of bearded seals. Although the number of bearded seals is relatively large at present, with the intensification of global warming, the number of ice floes is bound to drop sharply, and it is urgent to protect these seals who depend on ice floes for survival.
Climate change has led to the mass extinction of seals.
A study shows that during a climate change about 8,000 years ago, the Antarctic elephant seal acquired a new habitat, and when the climate changed again about 1,000 years ago, the elephant seal in this large habitat was almost completely extinct.
A press release issued by Durham University in the United Kingdom said that an international research team led by researchers from Durham University used gene technology to analyze some elephant seal residues found along the coast of Victoria, Antarctica. The results showed that the DNA in the samples was highly diverse, indicating that this area was once a large-scale elephant seal habitat. But now there is no elephant seal living in this area, and the nearest elephant seal habitat is 2500 kilometers away from here.
Further analysis shows that this is because a climate change about 8000 years ago caused the Antarctic ice sheet to shrink and formed this habitat. Due to the good environment and abundant food, elephant seals quickly migrated here and formed a large population. However, about 1000 years ago, the climate changed again, and the ice sheet "made a comeback". Except for a few elephant seals who returned to their original homes, most elephant seals in this area died out with environmental changes.
Arctic sea ice melts seals into American "refugees"
Greenland seals usually come to the sea ice off the east coast of Canada every spring to mate and reproduce, and migrate northward when the temperature rises gradually. However, more and more seals are now coming and staying on the east coast of the United States, and they can reach Carolina as far as the south, which is far from their destination. Studies have shown that with the shrinking sea ice area in the North Atlantic, the number of seals stranded on the east coast of the United States has soared, and most of them are either dead or in very poor health.
This study is currently published in the academic journal PLOSONE. Brianne Soulen, a biologist at the University of North Texas, one of the authors of the paper, said that the reduction of sea ice area should bear most of the responsibility for the detention of seals. According to statistics, most of the stranded seals are young seals, mainly males, accounting for about 62% of the total. The reason why male seals are more likely to stay is mainly because they are more inclined to swim alone and forage for food over a long distance.
White Greenland seals usually mate and reproduce on sea ice, and the female seals will then nurse their cubs and stay with them. Subsequently, the cubs slowly survived independently. Researchers speculate that with the decreasing area and number of sea ice, the ice surface will become more and more crowded, so many young seals will be forced to enter the sea before they learn how to sail and prey in the sea, which leads to these young seals losing their sense of direction, and as the fish in the sea migrate to the south, Soulen explained. This threat of shrinking sea ice area has caused two kinds of seals in Alaska: ringed seals and raccoon seals to enter the list of endangered animals.
Climate change causes Baltic leopard to have no ice to rely on.
Striped seals living in the Baltic Sea raise their offspring in ice caves. But now there are fewer and fewer ice caves to be found. The global warming has caused this problem, and then polar bears who feed on this seal will have no food to find.
The habitat of striped seals extends from the Arctic Circle to the Baltic Sea. However, according to the latest report of the World Wide Fund for Nature, in many parts of the Baltic Sea, especially in the Gulf of Botnia between Finland and Sweden and Riga Bay in Latvia, as well as the Oranfu Islands in Finland, almost all the ice sheets have melted, which has threatened the survival of newborn seals.
Catherine Munster, a Baltic biodiversity expert at WWF, said: "Striped seals usually give birth in mid-February. During the first seven or eight weeks after birth, seals will stay in ice caves on ice floes to feed their cubs so that they can get enough fat to survive in cold seawater."
However, she said: "The lack of ice around the Oran Islands and Riga Bay means that seals born this winter have no shelter, so it is difficult for them to survive." Without solid or enough ice to maintain their daily life, seal cubs have to swim in cold sea water without the protection of important fat layer, so they will die prematurely because of hypothermia and malnutrition.
It is estimated that there are 1,700 seals living in the Oran Islands and Riga Bay, which means that the melting of the ice sheet threatens the survival of almost a quarter of the seal population in the Baltic Sea. Recently, it has been reported that the high mortality rate of striped seals has occurred in the northern hemisphere for the second consecutive winter this year due to insufficient sea ice. Munster believes that a large number of seals died in the Baltic Sea, which is not only the result of climate change, but also declared the climate change situation in the region.
Dr. Zhou Jinfeng communicates with Dr. Sara.
Dr. Zhou Jinfeng, Secretary-General of China Green Development Association, once said, "The survival crisis of seals comes from human beings to a great extent. It is the over-industrialization and egoism of human society that has brought huge problems to the ecosystem and climate environment. Climate change not only threatens the survival of seals, but also will be an insurmountable problem for other species. The Katowice Conference on Climate Change in 2018 has clearly emphasized the seriousness of the climate threat and called on the whole society to take urgent action to achieve the 1.5℃ control target. In the context of this severe climate change, due to "legal hunting license" and "illegal poaching", the task of saving spotted seals will become more difficult, but this is not an excuse for inaction. " Dr. Zhou Jinfeng said: "Everyone should work hard for this and take responsibility; Relevant departments should also work together to prevent spotted seals from being endangered and make joint efforts to the greatest extent. "
This article refers to: Youth Science Pictorial, China Meteorological Bureau, Zhongqing Online, People’s Daily Online.
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