Canadian Harp Seals may have “read” the predictions of the coming decades of stabilization of global temperatures and perhaps some cooling. Animals like the Harp Seal have experienced many millions of years of climatic change and, through the complex processes of evolution and natural selection, may have developed an ability to sense coming changes.
This is from The Boston Channel:
Small numbers of juvenile harp seals are typically found each winter stranded along the coast of the northeastern United States. But this year, well over 100 adult harp seals – not juveniles – have been spotted … In some areas they’re reporting three times the normal number of sightings … we’ve had four sightings of adult harp seals in North Carolina, which we’ve never had before. We typically don’t see them that far south. …
For now, there is no clear explanation for why more seals are showing up in U.S. waters, said Gordon Waring, who heads the seal program at NOAA’s fisheries science center in Woods Hole, Mass.
They could be making their way south because of climatic conditions or perhaps in search of food, Waring said.
“These animals are known to wander a lot,” Waring said. “Whether they’re following food down or whatever, we don’t really have a good understanding of it.”
Garron said she and the seal organizations will look at environmental trends, such as water temperatures, to see if it’s influencing the harp seal range.
Regardless of the reason, biologists are taking notice, Doughty said.
Read more from The Boston Channel here.
Here is a 2009 WUWT item about Henrik Svensmark and his Global Cosmic Ray theory of how reduced Solar activity leads to cooling periods. Svensmark says “In fact global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning. No climate model has predicted a cooling of the Earth – quite the contrary. And this means that the projections of future climate are unreliable …”
More seals mean less fish. Seals prefer fish over six inches long, which means there will be less big fish eating little fish. This may explain recently reported population explosions of small herring in Maine, which in a few cases have migrated up rivers in such numbers that they used up all the oxygen and died in droves.
However a single codfish can lay over a million eggs. Hopefully many millions of little codfish are now growing up. Once they get over six inches they will start eating herring, and there will not be enough seals to put a dent in the exploding codfish population.
Anyone who has lived by the sea has witnessed the amazing increases and decreases in the populations of everything from clams to squid to herring to codfish to seals.
Anyone who has been at a university knows the thing to do is to blame man, and especially fishermen, for any variation from a fictional steady-state population. Then you follow by claiming you can “properly manage” the wild sea, if you are given the power to boss fishemen, and mankind, and the ocean, around.
Anyone who has been at sea knows you don’t boss it around. The sea bosses you.
And guess what animal loves to EAT these seals?
This is all part of a cunning plan to take over New England. First we send in the Harp Seals, then the Mounties. It will be ours before long!
Mwa ha ha…
Kevin says:
March 21, 2011 at 5:43 pm
What do they taste like?
Awful.
But… but… Henrik Svensmark being right would mean Leif Svalgaard being… wrong?
Leif is a world’s foremost solar scientist, right? Leif told us all what real science is, and what homegrown voodoo amateurish blah-blah is everything else…
Poor, poor us, ignorant unpublished masses! We are left in total confusion.
Could they be escaping polar bears?
/sarc
Just so many of them up here with the lack of predators, they have swamped the ocean and are moving out to find elbow or flipper room.
Perhaps an opportunity for a new green, renewable, sustainable industry for the New England folks who need employment. Some experienced Newfoundlanders could perhaps be enticed to come South for a wee bit and train some Yankee sealers.
Andrew30 says:
March 21, 2011 at 6:22 pm
Species do not ‘develop’ to survive, they develop IF they survive.
That needed to be said.
For all the stories of shrinking harp seal populations, their numbers have been steadily increasing since the early 70s (dept of fisheries and oceans Canada): http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fm-gp/seal-phoque/seal_hunt-chasse_phoque-eng.htm
In Canada, their numbers have increased from less than 2 million in the early 1970’s to 9 million in 2010. Not the perspective environmentalists would offer, but increasing population could be an explanation for increased sightings further south. Furthermore, the fact of increasing populations contradicts the assertion that warming is bad for harp seals.
Ed MacAulay says:
March 21, 2011 at 7:22 pm
“Just so many of them up here with the lack of predators, they have swamped the ocean and are moving out to find elbow or flipper room.”
Exactly. There are vagrant individuals in all animal populations. The higher their populations, the greater chance of vagrants. That is the underlying ’cause’ of this, which may be helped by this winter’s weather, or not.
Joshua says: Just curious. I remember seeing reports that of observed changes in migratory patterns in animals and zone changes in plants, the vast majority are consistent with global warming. I’ve also seen studies that very high percentages of animals studied showed temperature related changes consistent with global warming.
Like frinstance Joshua? What papers have shown unequivocally that changes to habits are based solely on global warming? Or maybe the changes were merely assumed to be caused by GW. And how do contemporary changes differ from changes in animal and plant habits in other decades and centuries? And how would we know in a mere 20 or 30 years that these were unique shifts in habits vs. natural shifts and fluctuations that come and go with the decades and centuries?
Just wondering about this and look forward to your reply Joshua.
Thanks and regards,
Clive
What southward species are normally the main competitors? And what is happening with them recently? Mountain hemlock, for example does well down in the warm valleys (as an ornamental), but is relegated to the wintery peaks (in nature) due to inability to compete for prime habitat. Species don’t end up living with snow & ice (i.e. on the fringes) because the “like” it; on the contrary, tolerating physical adversity is a way to avoid intense biological competition for prime resources.
…Also, are there southward species that are normally hostile, aggressive, &/or predatory towards the seals? And what is happening with these species recently?
Elizabeth beat me to it…perhaps nothing at all to do with warming, cooling or whatever atmospheric. Maybe. the environ”mentalists” were so successful with a media campaign that the population has exploded and many animals are just moving south to find space and a feed in a less competitive setting..
It appears that Harp seals are smarter the Climate Scientists and their computers. pg
A Canadian species with which I am familiar, namely the donna, insegnante di scuola, regularly appeared as far south as Fort Walton Beach, Fl, in the late 1960s and early 70s, during both summer and late fall months. I can tell you that my research into this phenonenem was detailed and rewarding. I conclude that the harp seal is following similar south-centric behavior.
Joshua said:
“Or, would you just be cherry-picking?”
Most of us here are in agreement that there has been at least some bit of global warming in the last 150 years. Why and how much are the real questions. Most of us here are also well aware and weary of all the reports (credible or not) of plant and animal behavior consistent with a warming world. Why would it not be of interest to also note animal behavior that is not consistent with a warming world?
Perhaps it is not the participants on this forum who are cherry picking.
Must be too warm in the Arctic for them. After all, if it’s cold here, it’s because it’s super-warm somewhere else, I’m told. Perhaps this isn’t the year for an Outer Banks vacation.
A baby harp seal walks into a bar.
Bartender says: what’ll it be?
Baby harp seal: anything but a Canadian Club!
Another factor to consider: Loss of birthing grounds, which would create intraspecies competition that would encourage dispersal. There was an MSM article alluding to this a few months ago. The issue at that time was a lack of ice [Gulf of St. Lawrence] (related to AO pattern at the time) and a shortage of beach space. There were concerns that storm surges would kill seals resorting to use of limited beaches. I’ve never worked on seals and I’ve never read the literature on them, but I know from first-hand research on other species that it isn’t always known to ecologists whether factors such as nesting site availability (for one example) are a stronger limiting factor than food availability.
They may be following the fish. What are the fish doing up north?
Sorry to irk you Andrew30. There are different strains of understanding of evolution and natural selection. One side, such as Richard Dawkins, believes all selection is at the gene level, while others, such as David Sloan Wilson (who Dawkins rightly calls the “the American group-selection apostle”) believes selection takes place at multiple levels, from the gene to the species and multiple interacting species. Despite some relatively minor disagreements, I have the highest respect for Dawkins, but I am closer to Wilson, who was a teacher, friend and colleague of mine at Binghamton University.
I think both Dawkins and Wilson would disagree when you write: “…Creature[s] do not ‘develop’ the ability to survive, natural selection simple kills the ones that were not born with the ability to survive.” Yes, natural selection kills the ones who, for whatever reason, do not survive and reproduce, but evolution, in the form of mutations and sexual cross-over, continually provides different genes and gene-combinations. Thus, it is not simply killing the failures, but recognizing, via relatively higher levels of success, those that have developed the ability to survive and reproduce.
Animals and even plants have thus developed the ability to sense changes in their environment and take advantage of them by modifying their behaviors. In the case of humans (and other primates, etc.) this adaptation is conscious, but in all cases, many millions of years of evolution and natural selection have developed instinctual individual and group behaviors that are also adaptive.
Harp Seals have survived for many millions of years, which includes many, many warming and cooling cycles. During that long period, their range has extended and contracted repeatedly, with many being killed in the process. The ones who survived and reproduced have evolved many traits and combinations of traits, at both individual and group levels. Therefore, I think it is responsible when I say they “… may have developed an ability to sense coming changes.”
Animals like the Harp Seal have experienced many millions of years of climatic change and, through the complex processes of evolution and natural selection, may have developed an ability to sense coming changes.>>>
Or maybe something changed in the place that they were, they didn’t like it, and so they went somewhere else. Building climate cycles centuries long into seal DNA…that’s a stretch…. wait… when you said “read”, you didn’t mean…
That’s it. They can read. Probably the clams taught them.
I personally don;t believe this has anything to do with global warming or cooling but closer to the option of following the food supply. Not quite however, it’s more along the line of the harp seal population has been steadily increasing and they have to go further afield to find enough food for them all. Just ask the cod fishermen in Eastern Canada about the shrinking fish stock. This is not because of over fishing by man as the limits allowed have steadily decreased, but caused by a larger population of seals eating the cod. Despite this constant harp seal population increase, our lovely old friend Greenpeace and their fellow eco terrorists insist on interfering with the legal harp seal hunt every year and spend fortunes lobbying against the hunt.
Pamela Gray says:
March 21, 2011 at 7:12 pm
And guess what animal loves to EAT these seals?
Oh no, that means the cute and cuddly Arctic Koala’s will not be too far behind.