A warming world welcomed by bowhead whales

The Oldest, Coldest Mammals May Be Some of the Best Prepared for Climate Change - Facts So Romantic - Nautilus:

"The Arctic they grew up in is unrecognizable, but bowhead whales are oddly calm. They appear to be unexpectedly benefitting from the warmer, less icy climate that has emerged over the past decade. 

Last month, it was announced that the Arctic in 2015 reached the warmest temperatures ever observed, and that it is warming twice as fast other parts of the world. It’s also losing ice at a faster rate than forecasts have predicted—and is expected to be ice-free by at most summer 2040.

This means changes underwater, too. 

More sunlight hitting surface water and changes in ocean circulation, fueled by warmer waters and the stronger storms associated with them, are boosting the numbers of krill and other planktons in some Arctic seas. Sue Moore, a NOAA biologist, calls this a “new normal” in the Arctic. And bowhead whales, at least in the Pacific Arctic of Alaska and northwestern Canada, where the most and best data is available, appear to be just fine with that.  

How are these massive whales—which populate the Arctic year-round and regularly live for more than a century—coping in an ecosystem different than the one they grew up in? Solving the mystery could shed light on who will and won’t inherit the changing Arctic. It could also have implications for the world economy, as increasing Arctic ship traffic may be on a literal collision course with increased whale numbers."

From the whaleopedia website:

Family: Balaenidae
Genus: Balaena
Species: B. mysticetus Linnaeus, 1758

Bowhead whales inhabit only arctic waters, where they follow the seasonal advance and retreat of the ice edge. Their populations have been severely reduced by whaling, making them the most endangered of all large whales. Their commercial value lay not only in a large yield of oil (70 to 90 barrels), but in baleen as well, for the manufacture of corsets and household brushes before the development of plastics. Bowheads were protected from commercial whaling in 1946, but the International Whaling Commission permitted an unregulated subsistence kill by or on behalf of Eskimos until recent years. The IWC now regulates the Eskimo kill. The U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 also permitted subsistence hunting of these whales by Eskimos.

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