Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The University of Western Australia, former home of Professor Lewandowsky, has published a new report which claims that whales are suffering, because their food sources are being depleted by melting Antarctic sea ice.
According to the press release;
“If the ice declines in the area that these forage in, then that will reduce krill and that will reduce how much food they have,” Ms [Janelle] Braithwaite said.
“Whales live this feast and fast lifestyle.
“Over the summer they’re feasting up on krill down in the Southern Ocean but once they leave, they’re pretty much fasting during their migration journey.
“It’s a bit like a car, if there’s not enough petrol at the petrol station, then you’re setting off with three quarters of a tank and you might not be able to make it.
“If these whales run out of petrol before they get back to the Southern Ocean, then there’s no safety net, they will die from exhaustion.”
The abstract of the study:
Krill (Euphausia superba) are fundamentally important in the Southern Ocean ecosystem, forming a critical food web link between primary producers and top predators. Krill abundance fluctuates with oceanographic conditions, most notably variation in winter sea ice, and is susceptible to environmental change. Although links between local krill availability and performance of land breeding, central place foragers are recognised, the effects of krill variability on baleen whales remain largely unclear because concurrent long-term data on whale condition and krill abundance do not exist. Here, we quantify links between whale body condition and krill abundance using a simple model that links krill abundance to sea ice extent. Body condition of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) caught in west Australian waters between 1947 and 1963 was estimated from oil yields in whaling records. Annual estimates of krill abundance in the Southern Ocean where those whales foraged (70°–130°E) were correlated significantly with contemporary annual winter sea ice extent. We hindcast sea ice extent for the whaling period from reconstructed temperature data and found that whale body condition was significantly correlated with hindcasted winter sea ice extent, supporting the hypothesis that variations in body condition were likely mediated by associated krill fluctuations. As humpback whales migrate and breed on finite energy stores accrued during summer foraging in the Antarctic, changes in sea ice and concomitant changes in krill abundance have long-term implications for their condition and reproductive success.
Read more: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00300-015-1685-0
The question in my mind is, since rising CO2 levels have been correlated with the record busting growth of Antarctic sea ice, for at least the last few decades, shouldn’t we burn as much coal as possible to help the whales?
This is sheer unadulterated nonsense because the second largest whale in the world Baelena Australis or Southern Right adult whale can vacuum up nearly 2 tonnes of plankton and krill a day while feeding in the Antarctic. The mating adults will need to put on that food store in order to spend the other half of the year going hungry journeying to shorelines, bays and estuaries like Australias in order to breed. And here’s the rub-
“From recent reports from sighting in South America, South Africa, Australia and the Southern Oceans, it appears that the population is increasing at a very healthy rate, doubling every 10 years, and the total number of individuals globally is thought to be around 15,000 animals.”
You bet they are just like Humpbacks who have now been sighted extraordinarily as far north as Darwin while Southern Rights have disabled a Sydney Harbour Ferry, been seen in the Hawkesbury and in the Derwent in Tasmania. Unheard of in my youth and that of any crew of the Sea Shepherd. If ever the Southern right was vulnerable to extinction it was when it was hunted for oil and corset bone but the truth is these whales are now officially saved due to the advent of fossil fuels and their more recent value as tourist attractions. The only limit to their growth in numbers now is to compete with humans for their krill stocks, both for fish farming and the pseudo health kick industry as krill oil capsules. Save the whale die-hards are living in the past.
The intended audience is buying… using your money!
“whale body condition was significantly correlated with hindcasted winter sea ice extent”
Was that a bit like hindcasting temperature using certain tree rings and getting some significant correlation with a confected outcome?
Beat me senseless with a hockey stick but the ‘press release’ was a better read. That there even was a press release says more about the ‘science’ than the abstract.
Can’t you just feel the pre Paris tension in the atmosphere and speaking of Paris won’t that give CO2 levels a boost!
yes, thei’ll try to scary us to death till Paris – but after 50 years green life scaring we ought to be dead already – anyone alive not informed?
25 years ago I saw my first live whale blowing off Whalers Way near Port Lincoln in South Australia and now you can bump into them everywhere-
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/whale-watch/sydney-ferry-hits-whales-in-harbour-20120806-23p9z.html
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2010/08/19/2987564.htm
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/whale-watch/whales-take–a-tour-up-the-hawkesbury-20120727-230in.html
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/whale-watch/bondi-rescue-close-encounter-with-a-whales-tail-leaves-man-with-a-giant-tale-to-tell-20130707-2pkar.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2703946/Father-daughter-kayakers-capture-footage-lifetime-two-humpback-whales-swim-underneath-lift-boats.html
http://www.sail-world.com/Another_breaching_whale_lands_on_boat_off_South_Africa/103587
http://www.nt.gov.au/nreta/publications/media/pdf/2007/08/20070815humpbackwhales.pdf
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/one-injured-and-boat-smashed-when-it-hits-whale-off-stradbroke-island/story-e6freoof-1226078225718
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-11-27/whale-sinks-catamaran/2353294
http://tourismvictorharbor.com/sawhalecentre/head_of_the_bight.html
The only problem is any young student reaching adulthood at 18 this year, never having experienced any global warming in their lifetime, wouldn’t know what their teachers and professors are lying to them about these endangered whales, when Southern Rights and Humpbacks have actually become a navigational hazard during their lifetime.
“The 2014 Sydney Whale Watching season was amazing and 2015 is on course to break all records. Humpback sightings have continued to increase every year and these amazing mammals just love to show off with breaches, tail slapping and even a close up wink when they are feeling extra curious.”
https://www.captaincook.com.au/sydney-harbour-cruises/sightseeing-cruises/whale-watching-am/
http://www.wildaboutwhales.com.au/
Whale watching cruises all over Australia and you’ll get a rain-check if you don’t see any.
And where there’s whales you’ll find their mates-
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-23/killer-whales-circle-boat-stun-scientists/6414710
Which is why the slow Southern Rights like noisy, high energy coastlines like the Bunda Cliffs or places like Sydney Harbour when they’re vulnerable calving so the Orcas can’t track them easily, whereas travelling in open water in large pods the adults can drive them off. The whale watchers know that and pull up at the regulation 100 metres distance with engines running so the whales come moseying right up close for the punters. The whale watching trade calls it a ‘mugging’.
Lewandowsky is talking through his backside folks.
Don’t you mean his blowhole?
I think there is a problem with the “simple mode” developed in this study, as it fails to take into consideration the fertilization effect of the ocean water around the continent by melting ice. Krill populations are dependent on phytoplankton as a food source. During the summers, the waters around the Antarctic are abundant with phytoplankton, krill food, which are fertilized with nitrogen that comes from the melting of the ice. The ice cap is a depository for nitrogen, especially as nitrate, that has been fixed in the atmosphere by the aurorae and deposited on the ice surface by ice and snow precipitation. An ice core sample will show fluctuations in the amount of nitrogen in the different ice layers and at one point in time these fluctuations seemed to correlate with solar activity (11-yr solar cycle), but this correlation doesn’t always hold for periods of time in the historical solar cycle record. The important point is that the ice cap moves to the ocean via the glaciers where it breaks off and melts in the circumpolar waters, releasing nitrogen to fertilize the rapid summer growth of phytoplankton, which in turn, leads to an explosive increase in the krill population.
If the sea ice extent of the Antarctic is increasing, meaning less ice melt, then there would be less of a fertilization effect from the ice. This would mean less phytoplankton, and consequently less krill. Seems like the simple model might be too simple and fails to take into account this well documented phenomenon that occurs each summer.
I wonder what kind of scientific theory they teach at University of Western Australia.
Do they even have a course on scientific theory?
All the krill eaters from fur seals to Adelie Penguins to Humpback and Blue Whales have been expanding their populations
“If these whales run out of petrol before they get back to the Southern Ocean, then there’s no safety net, they will die from exhaustion.”
Right, because whales are stupid and will just head on a super-long journey without being ready to survive that journey…
They’ll just pull up to the nearest Gull (service station).
How come there are no photos of skinny whales to back up this study?
Some 3-5 thousand humpbacks visit Bahia de Samana in Dominican Republic in the Caribbean each to calve and to mate between January and March. They then head to the north Atlantic for the other months. It is stupid to be pedaling alarm over this very abundant and vigorous species. So all you Antarctica-is-the centre-of-the-whale universe folks in the antipodes should study up before you write shreddible sciencey stuff. This isn’t from that self styled ‘Centre of Excellence’ we are told about – the one that gave an award to the leader of the Ship of Fools for, ermmm….getting stuck in sea ice looking for global warming in Antarctica a couple of years ago?
http://www.colonialtours.com.do/Englishballenas.htm
anyone still alive – not yet informed means: wrong strategie, opportunity windows passed.
go ahead, nothing to see here.
Just more BS going against the data that shows record sea ice and cold Southern Ocean temperatures.
Sea Ice coverage is dynamic- it expands and contracts over decadal periods of time. Nature is dynamic. When droughts occur inland, it impacts the food of foraging wild animals and that impacts the entire food chain.
The thing that never seems to decrease the past three decades is apocalyptic claptrap about the climate.
The article serves its purpose, Global Warming is melting the Antarctic and killing whales…
Just because a tiny part of AA might have been reduced and maybe 1% less crill in a certain area doesnt matter…….AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Global Warming we are all going to die………….You will be hearing people say GW is killing whales……
“You will be hearing people say GW is killing whales”
Let them make their stupid claims while Southern Rights double in numbers every decade off our shores and beaches. The more stupid claims the quicker their young captive minds will wake up they’ve been had.
The key point is “Whales live this feast and fast lifestyle.”
This natural feast and famine cycle probably applies to the last million years or so at least. So all it tells us is that the same sort of cycles that apply to land mammals also to whales.
Not much added to what land biologists already know. Is is possible that marine biologists did not also know the same cycles of boom and bust also apply to marine mammals?
Is there something in the water supply to the UWA?
And yet, recently announced in the MSM, record number of whales migrating north to warmer waters this winter.
Years ago I learned a simple “cause and effect” cycle in college biology class. The example was fox and hare populations. The hare population would be large, causing more fox to be born and live on them as a food source. This caused the hare population to decline, which caused the fox population to decline, which then caused the hare population to increase, and on and on and on.
Isn’t it the same with whales and what they eat? to understand this, scientists would need to study both populations long enough to catch a few cycles. Who knows how long a cycle?
“Isn’t it the same with whales and what they eat? to understand this, scientists would need to study both populations long enough to catch a few cycles. Who knows how long a cycle?”
That’s the point particularly with Southern Rights that were hunted almost to extinction for oil and corset bone –
http://www.environment.gov.au/marine/marine-species/cetaceans/whaling
The Southern Right whales (a close cousin of the Northern Right which became separated by equatorial waters) were protected back in the 1930s. In any case they were extremely scarce due to the ease of hunting, as they were slow swimmers, surface cruisers and floated when killed. Then from that Australian precis you see how largely Humpbacks and other species were hunted up until the late 70s.
Humpbacks being faster swimmers and harder to catch before protection have recovered big time whereas the Southern Rights decimated early numbers have taken much longer to reach serious breeding numbers but having done so are now on a steep uptick too. Their Antarctic food supply is likewise being impacted upon, the only question being when will supply and demand come into equilibrium again as it must. Ultimately if numbers of SR whales can’t get enough food store for the 6 months trek to Australia then they’ll not breed or perhaps perish in the attempt (weak ones will be easy prey for Great Whites and Orcas in that regard) and we’ll see the effects wash up regularly on our beaches and no doubt more Loondosky hysteria.
Not hard to see the knock on effects for other sea life in the Antarctic if the absence of original whale equilibrium numbers have swelled their ranks as competitve whale diet eaters. Noone living today can possibly know what Antarctic equilibrium sea-life was like before we removed so many of the giant baleen vacuum cleaners, but we’re now in the rapidly accelerating process of finding out.
No doubt the usual suspects will jump on every progresive change to further their cause but they’re really flying blind with whenever or whatever they measure of that evolutionary process. Just like global climate they have no firm base to stand on in order to judge any of it.
Even if the results were correct, the University of Western Australia had and probably still has some issues concerning competent and true science, Lewandowsky, the Cook-ie and the honourable members of the public know that by now. So these Western Australian
BushwhackersScientists didn’t look into the book of magic spells, that has just one word for the thesis they were working on so relentlessly: adaptation.adaptation?
We’re only just beginning to tune in to that with whales-
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150311160323.htm
http://news.psu.edu/story/141609/2008/09/12/research/right-whales-may-be-adapting-ocean-noise-pollution
But apparently only a few very special critters like humans, cats, dogs, budgies, rats, mice… can adapt to their noisier urban environment
Forget all that nonsense, only climatologists like Lewandowsky and Cook have the real understanding of all this Gaia stuff and where it all fits in the big picture.
Thanks for the looks into a fascinating and interesting world.
I just don’t understand why stupid Gaia didn’t manage to get Lewandowsky et al informed about that stuff. He’d be better off trying to sell tickets to the moon at one of his looney parties…
Oh thank goodness for all the rational people who comment! Melting sea ice affecting the whales? Hardly! I almost couldn’t read past the headline knowing outright this was going to be bogus science! Its all about the krill – everything about the krill! I remember working down in Antarctica and being terrified there was talk of certain countries harvesting the krill – but there was a certain element (F) that made it a bit awkward. But if you know the ecosystem in Antarctica it’s all about krill – there is not a lot of complexity there and removing krill on a commerical scale is mroe likely to have an impact than anything.
So imagine my horror when I now see, in recent months, a HUGE campaign to make people eat krill pills as if that is the latest vitamin supplement we have lived without for eons – but suddenly now need…
Ice melting – pshaw! Eyal Porat above summed it up nicely…
Quite an astonishing conclusion — krill has to have ice to survive! Then all that green stuff in gigantic growing-season blooms in the cool but ice-free temperate waters all over the globe aren’t krill/phytoplankton, it must be green plastic ’cause krill can’t survive w/o ice….
Quite an astonishing conclusion — krill has to have ice to survive! Then all that green stuff in gigantic growing-season blooms in the cool but ice-free temperate waters all over the globe aren’t krill/phytoplankton, it must be green plastic ’cause krill can’t survive w/o ice….
Astonishing isn’t it that the billion tons of krill and plankton ultimately depend on hanging off some ice in Antarctica. These creatures fill all the oceans – all of them and they are at all levels in the ocean from the surface to the bottom. One billion tons of them and the lifecycle as described in Wikipedia never mentions once their 100% dependence on growing on Antarctic sea ice. In fact Wikipedia falsely suggests krill grow all over the world and live an entire life without ice dependence at all. How astonishing. What would life be like without the global warming fanatics telling us about all these new things. Like how coral reefs will be destroyed by warming ocean water even though right now they seem to be healthier than ever and growing fabulously well in warm waters we are told they KNOW coral are going to die eventually. Or like how in 2080 our food supply will decline when we forget to move growing our food to more northerly newly arable growing regions. It’s amazing how they can predict things so accurately. I believe them 100%. Everything they say is 100% believed by every scientist or 97% anyway. For instance 97% of scientists agree whale populations will decline dramatically from declining sea ice because of the dependence of krill on ice so well established scientifically now. Thanks cagw’ers. 97% of the scientists who wrote the report anyway. After all that’s the only scientists that count right?
“If the ice declines…”
“if there’s not enough petrol…”
“If these whales run out of petrol..”
There’s a lot if ‘ifs’ in this article. It seems to be a lot like most other alarmist statements.
‘If the earth warms..’
‘If the sea level rises..’
‘If the oceans become acidic..’
They all sound very ‘iffy’ to me.