Warming Arctic Is Taking a Toll

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 15, 2006; Page A07

The rapid melting of Arctic sea ice appears to be separating walrus young from their mothers, leaving them likely to die at sea, a team of researchers said.

During a two-month cruise off northern Alaska in 2004, a Coast Guard icebreaker came across nine lone walrus calves swimming in the deep waters -- what the scientists called a highly unusual sighting.

This walrus pup alone in the Arctic Ocean, separated from its mother, was a troubling sight for researchers in 2004. (By Phil Alatalo -- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

They report in the journal Aquatic Mammals that the pups most likely fell into the sea when a shelf of sea ice that they lived on with their mothers collapsed because of an influx of unusually warm water.

"We were on a station for 24 hours, and the calves would be swimming around us crying," said Carin Ashjian, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and a member of the research team. "We couldn't rescue them."

Walrus mothers and their young rarely separate during the first two years of life, which they spend mostly on sea ice that covers shallow continental shelf waters. The adult walruses feed on crabs and clams on the sea bottom and return to the ice and their cubs, who survive on mother's milk.

The team found that water flowing from the Bering Sea to the shallower continental shelf of the Chukchi Sea off northern Alaska was six degrees warmer than it had been at the same time and place two years earlier.

Link Here

Mass whale deaths tied to U.S. Navy sonar, report says
Posted on Sat, Apr. 15, 2006
Mass whale deaths tied to U.S. Navy sonar, report says
The Yomiuri Shimbun

TOKYO - The U.S. Navy's deployment of active sonar to detect submarine activity is believed to have been responsible for at least six incidents of mass death and unusual behavior among pods of whales in the last 10 years, according to a recent U.S. Congressional Research Service report.

In one of the most serious incidents, 150 to 200 melon-headed whales were observed milling in Hanalei Bay off Hawaii's Kauai Island during a Rim of the Pacific Exercise on July 3, 2004, after midfrequency sonar was used, the CRS report said.
(snip)

The CRS report also listed five other incidents in which smaller whales, such as goose-beaked whales, harbor porpoises and killer whales, were found beached and dead in groups of a few to nearly 20. Many of the dead mammals had damaged hearing organs, and all five incidents coincided with U.S. naval exercises in the areas, the report said.
(snip)

Although the U.S. Navy has limited the deployment of active sonar in most oceans out of environmental concern since 2003, its use has increased in the seas surrounding Japan as U.S. forces are intensifying surveillance of China's military activities.
(snip/...)

Link Here