All over the web today, there’s the theme of: “dead walrus = caused by climate change”. On the Climate Progress blog they have this picture of the dead walruses (seen at left) which have been circulated by the Associated Press. I found the source photo on the Alaskan Daily News (ADN) here.
While uncredited on Climate Progress, the photo appears to have been taken from an airplane or helicopter by Tony Fischbach of the U.S. Geological Survey and distributed via The Associated Press.
In the ADN news article two things stand out:
1- The USFWS official quoted in the article, says that he doesn’t know the cause of the deaths:
“It’s just too early to say until we can get someone on the ground,” Woods said.
They report the dead walruses appeared to be mostly new calves or yearlings. However, neither the age of the dead walruses nor the cause of death is known, said Bruce Woods, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
2- The AP reporter, Dan Joling, gives a platform to somebody who also isn’t on the ground, or even Alaska but works in San Francisco, who assigns climate change as the blame:
Shaye Wolf, spokeswoman for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the walrus deaths were alarming.
“It provides another indicator that climate change is taking a brutal toll on the Arctic,” she said.
This isn’t the first time AP writer Jolin has had a story angle downplayed by Brice Woods. The other poster child for Arctic climate change, the polar bear was part of a 2006 AP story where woods also downplayed the significance.
Before I say anything further, let me point out that I’m no expert on Alaskan wildlife. That being said, neither is Joe Romm and many of the other bloggers who repeated the AP story. So, I’m no more qualified to comment than any of them are. But since they’ve advanced a theory, I wish to do so also. I want to draw your attention to something curious in the Fischbach photograph that many websites used, but made no commentary on outside of the “dead walrus = caused by climate change” script.
Expand the photo above. Note that every walrus has what appears to be blood on it. I counted seven in the photo, each having a one or more red spots that seem to be bloody in origin. I can’t tell if the heads and tusks are on them carcasses either. Maybe somebody who knows what a dead beach walrus is supposed to look like can tell better? Hold onto that thought for a bit.
One of the theories from the “dead walrus = caused by climate change” theme is “Retreating sea ice might have taken away some of the platforms walrus use to hunt and rest, pushing to walrus to shore.”
Here’s a summary on the walrus from the University of Michigan:
Walruses prefer to inhabit areas with ice floes in the shallower regions near the coasts of Arctic waterways. Their seasonal migration patterns coincide with the changes in the ice. In the winter, walruses move south as the Arctic ice expands, and in the summer they retreat north as the ice recedes. This migration can cover distances of 3000 km. Individuals concentrate where the ice is relatively thin and dispersed in the winter. In the summer time, bulls may use isolated coastal beaches and rocky islets. Cows and young prefer to stay on ice floes in all seasons (Nowak 1991, Parker 1990).
And so says the theory, because they were pushed to shore, they were trampled by a stampede. No other cause is considered in this recent blast of news stories.
A stampede can be triggered by a polar bear, a plane or other perceived threat to the herd. That’s certainly possible. It has happened before according to this report from the Seattle Times in 2007:
Walruses are vulnerable to stampedes when they gather in such large numbers. The appearance of a polar bear, a hunter or a low-flying airplane can send them rushing to the water.
Sure enough, scientists received reports of hundreds and hundreds of walruses dead of internal injuries suffered in stampedes. Many of the youngest and weakest animals, mostly calves born in the spring, were crushed.
Biologist Anatoly Kochnev of Russia’s Pacific Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography estimated 3,000 to 4,000 walruses out of population of perhaps 200,000 died, or two or three times the usual number on shoreline haulouts.
He said the animals only started appearing on shore for extended periods in the late 1990s, after the sea ice receded.
“The reason is the global warming,” Kochnev said.
Here’s the article photo that shows a trampled walrus:
ANATOLY A. KOCHNEV / AP
This photo provided by Pacific Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography shows a dead walrus, foreground, after a stampede on Cape Vankarem, Russia in March, 2007.
Here’s another photo and story from the same time period, from Physorg.com
Headless Walruses Alarm Alaska Officials
August 16th, 2007 By MARY PEMBERTON, Associated Press Writer
A dead walrus without its ivory tusks lay washed up on a beach of Norton sound off the coast of Nome, Alaska on Wednesday Aug. 15, 2007. The larger than normal number of walrus carcasses washing up on the beaches of Norton Sound has prompted an investigation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. (AP Photo/Diana Haecker)
(AP) — An unusually high number of walrus carcasses missing their heads and ivory tusks have washed up on beaches this summer, alarming wildlife officials.
###
No mention of “global warming” in that story. It also didn’t get much coverage. Old news, poachers at work, move along nothing to see here.
But it brings up an interesting question. In the Fischbach photo above that prompted the latest round of “dead walrus = caused by climate change” stories, we have seven of seven carcasses apparently with blood on them. Many of them appear to have blood only at one end. In the 2007 Kochnev dead walrus photo above, attributed to trampling, we don’t see any blood as would be expected by a trampling, which usually causes death by internal injuries and traumatic asphyxiation.
In the paper on traumatic asphyxiation, they don’t attribute much to blunt force injuries, and there’s no mention of blood. True, its about humans, but humans are mammals with lungs also and I can’t find any papers on walrus tramplings. I’d venture it to be undocumented.
I suppose it is possible that some blood might be seen in a mass trampling of walrii, but in seven out of seven carcasses?
Another possible explanation that fits the blood evidence in the Fischbach photo might be illegal poaching for tusks. With the walrus on the beach and within easy reach of anyone with a rifle, they’d make easy targets, but that seems to not to be in the realm of possibilities for our current news writers and bloggers.
Here’s an article that talks about the walrus in depth and notes the poaching issue:
Although both the United States and Russia have prohibited hunting except by native peoples, some conservationists contend that this “subsistence” hunting is now primarily commercial. Poaching has increased since an international moratorium on international trade of elephant ivory was enacted (walrus ivory is a good substitute for many purposes). Between poaching and the legal killing of 10,000-15,000 walruses in the eastern and western Arctic each year, the population of all walruses is likely to decrease greatly.
Now again I’m no expert on Alaskan wildlife but in the current news context, why isn’t anyone mentioning the poaching issue at all?
The International Whaling Ban was put into effect in 1986. This too put a big crimp on the illicit world market for ivory, driving the price up.
Since then there’s been quite a bit of walrus poaching for ivory.
In 1992, the CBS Evening News did a report on Walrus poaching:
(Studio: Dan Rather) Report introduced.
(Washington: Rita Braver) Walrus poaching ring in Alaska featured; excerpt shown of poaching videotaped by undercover United States Fish and Wildlife agent. [Fish and Wildlife Service director, John TURNER – talks about illegal ivory trading.] Details given, videotape excerpt shown of bogus trading post sting operation by United States Fish and Wildlife agents. [Special agent Adam O’HARA – comments on poachers.]
Here’s a prosecution in the news in 2004:
Men accused of shooting animals to sell tusks – without using the rest of them
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FAIRBANKS – Five Gambell men are accused of poaching walruses in the Bering Sea to sell the tusks. http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/080804/sta_poaching.shtml
An here’s a recent investigative report that has been turned into a book. “Animal Investigators: How the World’s First Wildlife Forensics Lab Is Solving Crimes and Saving Endangered Species”
Excerpts:
At a recent meeting, leaders of the Alaska Native walrus hunting community had urged him to investigate illegal walrus hunting. While most Alaskan Natives scorned “headhunting,” —killing a walrus simply for its ivory tusks—Crane could see numerous examples from the seat of his plane. Local residents typically blamed the Russian villages on the other side of the Bering Strait. They claimed time and waves brought the dead animals to Alaska and that local Inuit hunters took the tusks – the only part that could be salvaged from the decomposing bodies.
Had the animals died naturally and then had their heads cut off? Or had they been killed for their tusks? Did Russian bullets kill the animals? Had Alaskans? The situation had been going on for years, and it was time to put an end to it. Crane needed definitive answers.
Normally, Crane would have sent the items to the lab for analysis. This time, the sheer size and number of the bodies forced a different approach. A team of forensic scientists, composed of FWS Lab Director Ken Goddard, Deputy Director Edgard (Ed) Espinoza, and veterinary medical examiner Richard (Dick) Stroud, would go to the scene.
Like the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Animal Investigators spotted dead walrus from the air. Then they went onto the beach to give the full CSI treatment.
But what if Animal Investigators had simply shrugged their shoulders and said “eh, global warming”?
We know the Arctic has had warm spells before, such as occurred in 1922.
November 2nd, 1922. Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.
The walrus apparently did OK then, as it has through millenia before man. Why all of the sudden then is the main cause of walrus deaths attributed to “global warming”. Is it reporting bias, like we’ve seen with extreme weather events now viewed by satellite and Doppler radar that would have gone unnoticed in the past? Given that we now have broad eyes and ears in the Arctic, are we simply more attuned than 100 years ago? Id say that is a factor.
Bu also, why when given a news photo showing seven apparently bloody walrus carcasses has nobody raised the possibility of poaching?
Nobody, including me, wants to see our Alaskan wildlife die or be killed through greed, stupidity, or carelessness. But before we go slapping on that catch all label of “global warming did it”, even before the primary wildlife investigators of this weeks event get a chance to get on the ground and determine the cause, we owe it to the animals and to ourselves to look at all the possibilities and to wait to determine the true cause before we go laying blame.
Otherwise, walrus poaching might just get a free pass under the guise of “global warming did it”.
One can easily see an animal killed by the “weather” but how does an abstract mathematically human concept that is an analysis of long term “weather” known as “climate” kill an animal?
Very strange.
It’s a clear case of it’s the weather (or other factor) not climate that killed the beastie.
Animals can be killed by the weather just like humans can be but no animals or humans have ever been killed by the “climate”! The “climate” exists in scientific papers and abstract mathematical statistical concepts. It takes real things to kill real things, like too much water or too little water – and that’s weather not climate!
It’s weather not climate!!! [:|]
A stampede is the most viable cause.
Thanks for debunking the climate cause which is absolutely BS (Bad Science).
An interesting theory. I await the final report from wildlife biologists in the field. Unless they are told not to go to the site since the “correct” reason has already been divined by the activists in SF.
See also the article about the the Center of Biodiversity
Sep 18, 2009
Center for Biodiversity Release Another Embarrassment
http://www.icecap.us right column, second article.
Pretty ironic if it turns out to be the animal researchers plane which caused the stampede that killed those animals.
On the other hand, that may have been the plan from the start.
The mass deaths are probably caused by a lack of single payer health care.
You have to cogently analyse the issues here, folks.
The walri normally splash around in amongst the sea-ice. They hunt cute little baby seals on the sea-ice.
An immediate consequence of profligate carbon pollution is the scientifically verified summer sea-ice reduction – despite all the crowing about sea-ice extent increasing, it has been scientifically proven that 2009 has the third lowest ever (since records began!) Arctic sea-ice extent.
As a direct result of this, all of the walri (who formerly played around on the sea-ice) now have to play around on dry land, which isn’t melting away between their feet – ahh, sorry, flippers.
Consequence – many more thousands of walri in a given area. A stampede can be caused by something as simple as flying over in a helicopter taking photographs of the marooned walri.
It is the stampede that cause the walri carnage, directly attributable to Global Warming.
REPLY: I assume you forgot to add /sarc ?
[Aldolfo – snip]
Even dear old David Attenborough made the point that the large males can crush the smaller females and calves in a stampede. It was in one of the “Life of Mammals” episodes.
I would agree with ‘WWS’ as a possibility.
Anything for the Climate Change religion.
Really hard to tell, but if you enlarge the photo and look at that middle fore-ground carcass, it looks like there may be tracks approachng and circling the body. It will take investigators on the ground to know for sure, though, and I hope they don’t just bury the story later. If it was poachers, they need to be dealt with.
I remember a few years back an incident of dead dolphins washing up onshore. Global warming got the blame initially. Months later, after an investigation it turned out the dolphins died of a highly contagious virus (unrelated to sea temperatures). Dolphins like humans are susceptible to infection / plague.
I vote for poachers. I don’t think Global Warming kills with rifle bullets, just yet!!
“The walri normally splash around in amongst the sea-ice. They hunt cute little baby seals on the sea-ice.”
That’s an assumption, a huge one. You’re assuming that the “walri” are limited to behaviors or evolved adaptations that only let them survive as you describe.
Clearly their species has been around through many 10’s of thousands of years Kaboom, which means that they’ve been through much warmer periods (as well as colder periods) – yet they are here!
Oops that falsifies your inaccurate hypothesis Kaboom. Learn to think it through dude.
Actually it would have been more fun to have said:
Kaboom goes your hypothesis!
[:)]
If we assume there are puncture marks causing the bloodied wounds, can we officially say ‘Global warming bites’?
Missing heads and ivory tusks … I think that would be what you call a ‘clue’.
Must be climate change.
You have to wonder, what if they had Obamacare? Oh the horror of Walruses without health insurance coverage.
I suggest we demand facts.
And sometimes sick animals drive themselves up on the beach to die.
And here I thought that in this country, man is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
There’s a term for that.
The blood on the animals was the first thing I noticed without even reading the rest of the post. My first gut reaction was poachers…again without reading. After reading the rest of the post, I’m more convinced that the deaths are human-caused, but that’s only going from one picture. AGW doesn’t figure in at all. The “A” for certain, but more likely ABH (Anthropogenic Bullet Hole).
I would have thought that if taken from a helicopter, they would have put down and taken better pictures. A fixed-wing aircraft would be less likely to do so.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22260892/
3000 walruses die in stampedes. The interesting part is because of ice retreating sooner, the walruses are congregating on land in very large numbers. From this article 40,000 walruses gathered in one spotl THis article comes from 2007 describing the Russian side of the artic in the Chukchi area. The climate has changed in the artic, melting the ice sooner taking away a place for the walruses to hunt from.
Here is what they eat and the depth at which they find it.
So, Ice or no ice, they’re quite adaptable.
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Walrus/dietwal.html
Interestingly, the blood spots all seem to point to the same direction, as if the animals were shot from the spotter plane which took the photograph or from a nearby hill overlooking the scene. Also, it’s more than unlikely that if they were crushed in a stampede bleeding would be seen in spots at the heads while the heads seemingly are not crushed.
“The Pacific walrus population is believed to have doubled between about 1960 and 1980 and reached a maximum population of more than 200,000. By 1978, the reproductive rate was declining as the population approached its environmental carrying capacity. The combined annual kill of walruses in Alaska and the former Soviet Union at least doubled during the early 1980s and it is now believed that the population is declining.”
So … the Walrus were killing themselves off by successfully breeding!
“The North Atlantic populations did not make a similar recovery. There may only be from 1500 to 2000 walruses in the northeastern Atlantic today. Protection from commercial hunting since the early 1950s has lead to recolonizing the waters around Svalbard . The walrus population in Greenland’s Thule district may be stable but the population off central west Greenland remains depleted.
Native people in all of the polar regions continue to hunt them with high-powered rifles and motorboats. Many shot walruses are not recovered and those that are recovered are used only for their ivory. Human occupation, whether it is Native villages, industrial sites or military installations, appear to endanger the terrestrial hauling out of the animals and some traditional grounds are no longer available to the walrus.”
http://www.savethewhales.org/walrus.html
Here’s a recent eye-witness account of the huge numbers of walruses that now congregate on the Russian coast:
Because the summertime ice from the shallow coast up towards the North Pole goes away due to global warming, the walruses’ natural habitat to search for food as well as rest has disappeared. Where the ice is now is much too deep for the walruses to dive down to the bottom and find their favourite nourishment, mussels. This has resulted in the walruses coming ashore. There are now tens of thousands of walruses literally lying on each other where hundreds or none at all were located.
At sunrise, when we could see the surroundings in the bay where we had anchored, we could hardly believe our eyes. Walruses were everywhere, even high up on the steep hillsides. This is right next to the small Chukchi village, Rirkarpi. Vladi met us when we came ashore. He is the promoter of the polar bear patrols that WWF sponsors. For the most part, the job instead consisted of him protecting the large masses of walruses lying on land.
With Vladi, we could carefully approach the walruses. We were forced to remove all colourful clothing and backpacks. At a safe distance of about 100 metres, we could photograph this gigantic colony. It was both a fascinating and frightening sight. There were walruses absolutely everywhere. Thousands of walruses in the water pressing and trying to come up on land meant that those already on land had to slowly but surely press themselves further and further up the land. Suddenly, we could see through the binoculars how a big section of the flock about 500 metres away were struck by panic. Those on land did their best to get down into the water. But because it was so steep, the walruses literally slid down. Vladi explained this was the worst with so many gathered in one spot. He said that in the event we had just witnessed, ten or so walruses had probably been squeezed to death.
http://www.skinnarmo.com/ click on Union flag for English version.
Note that bears and arctic foxes could have scavenged the bodies which would cause the bleeding, also the carcasses have bird droppings on them and have probably been pecked by gulls.
http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/data/media/2/gray-whale-carcass-with-polar-bears_6728.jpg