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”.
When I hear stories like this one, I feel very tired. That an environmental activist can think of using a photograph like this to promote the idea of climate change, and even worse, that it ends up getting some credit, puts ourselves in the place we deserve. Fortunately we got to name our own species, otherwise we wouldn’t have got the “sapiens” bit.
Of course, climate kills species (and creates new ones), but you don’t get photos of the killing (or the birth). It simply does not work that way.
This is just another attempt by alarmists to spead more ridiculous tripe to gain support for ‘cap and tax’. And frankly, no one is buying it. My profession allows me to communicate with professionals from many backgrounds around the world: banking, insurance, oil and gas, renewable fuels, advertising & not one of the tens of hundreds I speak to believe in global warming or that man is the cause of climate change. NOT ONE ! Its sort of frustrating. I would have thought by now I would run across several. (Well, there was this ex-navy seal now turned consultant, but as it turned out, he only thought so because his wife told him so. I straightened him out. Took an hour, a few beers and a laptop). Or it could just be that some upper-class individuals are too embarrassed to disagree with me. Either way, my whole intent is to involve as many people to talk and write to their political representatives to listen to their concerns. I can only hope that they will. Recently, I started to engage scientists. Mostly geologists and some chemists. Young and working on their thesis’. They are lukewarmers at best. Its understandable, considering their position. The reason I’ve brought all of this up is to cheer on the scientists that dedicate themselves to searching for the truth and those that do, continue to publish their work, so men and women like me, have the ability to share these facts with as many people as possible. I for one believe, that while the fight is not over, the tide has turned. Which is evident in how desperate global alarmists are becoming. Average people are watching. We just need to motivate them do more than sit and think that there is nothing they can do. Because a great many of them think that Govts can and will do what they want and I for one am not goin to allow that to happen. Keep the fact machine running ! -David Alan-
Climate Alarmist is a true profession!
Take the career of Stephan Schneider.
In 1978 he went bogus on prediction an Ice Age, today he is predicting Thermogeddon.
http://algorelied.com/?p=2839
Isn’t it hilarious.
From the Alarmism Archive: The coming Ice Age
The Northern Hemisphere is getting colder.
Glaciers are growing and with the current cooling rate we will experience ice age conditions within 200 years. Presented by Spock.
This is one of the problems with our lazy modern media, they ask an activist group like “Center for Biological Diversity”, who named themselves to look like some sort of scientific research group, and then spout what they say as science gospel.
http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/action/index.html
They need single payer insurance coverage. This can be aided by putting Artic drillers in jail and taxing crude.
Climate progress says it is global warming and the canary in the mine. Of course they do this before finding the cause of death.
The green movement does seem to get away with promoting these slanted stories time and again.
This incident occurred southwest of Barrow Alaska, where the sea ice melts out by the end of July every year.
This is the Walrus lives. Their habitat includes only those areas which normally have sea ice for about 9-10 months of the year, close to the coast and near large islands where breeding can occur.
If it got much colder and the sea ice melted later, they would probably have to move south.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Odobenus_rosmarus_distribution.png
I haven’t read every comment on this thread, but if someone – anyone – can or has found a single tusk in that photo, I’d be really shocked. I can’t find any. Which translates to — it was poachers, gang. Walrus tusks are too big to miss – they would be obvious even on a dead walrus.
REPLY: Assuming they are adults, that would be correct. As the USFWS spokemans said, we just don’t know yet. – Anthony
But, why walruses could die by climate change? They are homoeothermic animals and their bodies’ temperature is regulated by internal thermal mechanisms. What climate change, specifically, could have been caused their dead? This is absolutely nonsense.
Walruses are not plants rooted on ground. They can move and change of location whenever they wish.
JLKrueger (00:17:22) :
Garth (23:45:39) :
Agree with you absolutely. Why can’t people just say “I don’t know?”
Well, at least the spokesperson with the USFWS said as much. And that’s the real main point. We don’t know and we’re all guessing based on one low-res photo showing seven dead walruses, not hundreds of dead walruses.
Although the report is of ~200 carcasses.
Looking at other pictures of walruses crushed in stampedes, the beach is churned up around the carcasses (for example the picture in the AP story from 14 December 2007) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22260892/
That does not appear to be the case in the picture above.
But the tide has come in at least once since they died and it would appear that the herd is no longer there.
I’m wondering why there’s no apparent attempt to at least verify the immediate cause of death. It doesn’t even appear from the report that the animals’ ages are certain.
The photo was taken from a plane while flying on a survey, a vet was being sent to investigate at the time of the report.
I read several comments about “new calves or yearlings” not supporting the poaching theory, but the article also sited “neither the age of the dead walruses nor the cause of death is known”. From the lack of perspective in the picture it is hard to tell the size of the animals. If the lack of tusks was used to aid in classifying the bodies as calves or yearlings then the poaching theory has not been disproved.
Bill Tuttle (02:25:17) :
I’m not an Alaskan wildlife expert, either, but Sibling Number Three just retired after a twenty-year stint with US Fish and Wildlife in Anchorage. He looked at the photo and said, “They all took head shots. Poachers.”
Did you ask him why the poachers would shoot ~200 walrus calves and leave the bodies behind?
The Barrow Ice Observatory has put up a lot of the data they have been gathering over the years.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/snowice/sea-lake-ice/Barrow_observatory.html
It looks like the sea ice at Barrow (off-shore in the Chukchi sea) broke up on July 11th this year, the latest date it has been since 2000 (when this record began – some of the other records don’t show any particular trend in the ice-break-up date).
So, the walrus deaths are not due to the ice melting out earlier.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/snowice/sea-lake-ice/Brw09/Melt-out.png
Yet there is one and only one picture. Surely they could have taken more pictures. Can’t imagine warmists passing on that big a photo op for the sacred cause.
If that were true it doesn’t explain what appears to be tire tracks in the center of the picture. Nor does it explain the footprints near the carcasses. Nor does it explain the blood which is red in the picture and which does not appear to have been “washed” by the tides. The tides would have washed the sand around the carcasses which, if you look closely, you can see blood in the sand. It doesn’t take long for blood to dry and turn black. Addionally, as has already been pointed out, once the heart stops pumping, the blood pools and thickens in the lower body parts (gravity takes over). The carcasses also do not appear to have shifted from their wallows.
Yes, we all got the plane/helicopter bit. No, the report said they would try to send a vet. It’s now been three days and nary a peep.
Finally, even the article admits that herds on the Alaska side are generally so much smaller than those on the Russian side that mass crushings are rare since the animals are more dispersed.
Some of our troops are dying each day in Afghanistan, and this gets more airtime.
Something is bad wrong with that picture.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Perhaps we could ask why you insist on ignoring the USFWS rep who said we can’t determine age or cause of death until we can get someone on the ground
Oh yeah, it doesn’t fit the Alarmist hysteria to do so.
We have a single picture with 7 (SEVEN) dead walruses with bloody wounds lying in bloody sand. Nothing more. I’m waiting for the rest of the pictures.
And don’t try to tell me about the difficulty of getting more than one “shot” off from an airplane. I get more pictures of humans in a single aerial pass in the mountains of Afghanistan, often while under fire than these guys seem to have gotten.
One would think these intrepid scientists would make more than one pass, drop a little lower and take lots of shots to document a big killoff. No one was shooting at them either.
Sorry, the script has too many holes.
Anthony
The comment (20:05:30) was in response to the article, not the situation.
There is a pessimistic wing of the AGW community. There’s not going to be enough reduction in CO2 to prevent the loss of all the Arctic summer ice. Given this inevitability, these seven deaths aren’t very important.
Efforts to stop AGW will continue, in aid of other animals elsewhere, and man.
It would have been the Atlantic walrus that was affected by 1922’s warmer Gulf current. 81 north, where the ice began above Svalbad is roughly at the northern range of the walrus…as shown in Wikipedia. According to a world atlas, this is well within the continental shelf.
The pack ice would have been thicker (more multi-year ice) then. So generally there would not have been the current problem of the sea ice receeding past the continental shelf.
Also, some parts of the range of the Atlantic walrus are outside the reach of the Gulf current.
P.S……Going further out onto thin ice…in speculations…
The northern edge of the given range above Svalbad is likely to be the usual edge of the pack ice. Suggesting that if it melts back, the sea floor is still reachable by the walruses.
And to the question of whether the Svalbad walruses could get to the now-more-northern ice, we have:
1. an animal that can (in some areas) migrate long distances
2. an animal that lives on moving sea ice
3. a range map that shows large areas of open water
I vote for Aliens. Same as the cattle mutilation thingie. 😉
Well, if you include the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police, that statement is 100% accurate…they are, afterall our allies and they take far more casualties than we do…mostly because they are not as armored. A Ford Ranger pickup does not fare as well when under fire as an Up-Armored HumVee.
Our own, Americans that is, tend to get hit in clumps…an IED here, a suicide vehicle borne IED (SVBIED) there, then days of quiet. Most days aren’t really to bad here, but that also really depends upon where you are. Four of the 34 provinces here account for about 90% of the violence.
And yet, your observation about what is important is still spot on. The silly things we get worked up over when there are far more serious and immediate concerns to worry about.
Nasif Nahle (08:09:34) :
I believe the climate change issue is that because of the lack of ice the animals were on land and therefore died in a manner Shaye Wolf called “brutal.” However the comment by Bill Illis (07:09:47) makes this seem irrelevant. Unless an animal dies peacefully while sleeping, death is easily called brutal and we can’t make it otherwise. It gets headlines, though.
We don’t yet know that the animals were shot. It is worth noting that polar bears became much easier to hunt and kill with rifles, snowmobiles, and airplanes than they were with native technology – and seems to have been why there numbers decreased in some places. That was the problem – now stopped – and it was not global warming.
Another oddity is that people get trampled and killed at special shopping events, music concerts, soccer games, nightclub fires, and by bulls in Spain – anywhere thousands crowd together it seems a few get hurt or killed. I don’t think walruses (walrii ?) have a special dispensation from this sort of thing.
JLKrueger (09:23:50) :
Phil. (08:30:20) :
“Although the report is of ~200 carcasses.”
Yet there is one and only one picture. Surely they could have taken more pictures. Can’t imagine warmists passing on that big a photo op for the sacred cause.
I’m sure they did but the newspaper would only show one.
“But the tide has come in at least once since they died and it would appear that the herd is no longer there.”
If that were true it doesn’t explain what appears to be tire tracks in the center of the picture. Nor does it explain the footprints near the carcasses.
There aren’t any in the picture I’m looking at.
Nor does it explain the blood which is red in the picture and which does not appear to have been “washed” by the tides. The tides would have washed the sand around the carcasses which, if you look closely, you can see blood in the sand. It doesn’t take long for blood to dry and turn black. Addionally, as has already been pointed out, once the heart stops pumping, the blood pools and thickens in the lower body parts (gravity takes over). The carcasses also do not appear to have shifted from their wallows.
The sand has been washed around the bodies, blood won’t turn black in saltwater and will wash blood out of the holes in the carcass.
“The photo was taken from a plane while flying on a survey, a vet was being sent to investigate at the time of the report.”
Yes, we all got the plane/helicopter bit. No, the report said they would try to send a vet. It’s now been three days and nary a peep.
No they said: “We’ve sent up a couple of veterinarians to, hopefully, get on site to where the carcasses were to do some forensics, to try to determine what the cause of death might be”, it’s not like they can just drive up there, the nearest habitation is 50 miles away.
Finally, even the article admits that herds on the Alaska side are generally so much smaller than those on the Russian side that mass crushings are rare since the animals are more dispersed.
More dispersed? This is the group in that vicinity a couple of weeks ago, do they look dispersed to you?
http://images.morris.com/images/juneau/mdControlled/cms/2009/09/18/494526428.jpg
Those dead walrus have been detusked…. There is even shoe prints around them.
Looks to me to be hunters. They’ll have to take it up with the indigenous owners of the land.
Ron de Haan (05:34:46) :
Climate Alarmist is a true profession!
Take the career of Stephan Schneider.
In 1978 he went bogus on prediction an Ice Age, today he is predicting Thermogeddon.
http://algorelied.com/?p=2839 Isn’t it hilarious. . . . Thanks for the link Ron. Amazing how a profession like a Climate Alarmist can do so much damage, mediawise, with such little fact and a lot of double speak. Just like Snakeoil Salesmen. Uncanny.
I strongly doubt that these carcasses have been scavenged. I have seen any number of scavenged animals and they don’t look like this. Scavenged animals are dead, they don’t bleed, and Phil, no, all the saltwater in the world won’t turn coagulated blood liquid again. Also scavenging an intact walrus cadaver isn’t easy, they have extremely tough hides. A polar bear could do it, but not a polar fox, and most definitely not a gull or raven. This is the reason such avian scavengers go for the eyes, they don’t have some weird preference for eyes, it’s just that it is the only part of the body they can get at unless the body has been opened by a carnivore.
Blood may not be completely incompatible with a stampede since it does happen that walruses inadvertently stab each other, but not seven out of seven.
As for the walruses being dependent on sea ice, I don’t believe it. In Svalbard where they are completely, and effectively, protected they are almost always found on land in summer, even when there is plenty of sea-ice around. Also back in the Viking Period, before they were hunted to extinction, walruses occurred along the Kola coast in northwestern Russia, where there is hardly any sea-ice even in winter.
Incidentally they were hunted for two reasons: the walrus ivory, and the hides. Walrus leather was the strongest known substance in northern Europe at that time, and the preferred material for ships rigging ropes.
Looks likes there’s been some caribou deaths too. “Climate change made me do it, yer honour!”
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/rural/story/725368.html