by Jim Steele
Gray whales are remarkably resilient animals. Eastern Pacific whales make a round-trip of 10,000 miles between their warm winter waters around Baja California to give birth, then feed in the cold Bering and Chukchi Seas from May thru September, gaining enough energy that must sustain them for the rest of the year. Unlike other whales, gray whales have specialized on suctioning the sea floor for food, preferring sand dwelling amphipods.
While experts suggest the optimal whale population has historically been between 18,000 and 22,000 individuals, their coastal migrations made them easy targets for whalers in the late 1800s, reducing their population to somewhere between just 250 and 5000 individuals. After receiving protection by the International Whaling Commission in 1947, they quickly rebounded and by 1995 were removed from US Endangered Species List. Despite climate change, by 2018 gray whale numbers increased to 27,000+ and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature considered them a species of Least Concern.
Why such increases in whale abundances? The lack of Bering Sea ice between 2012 and 2018 had allowed more photosynthesis. Stanford researchers reported a 57% increase in phytoplankton in the past 2 decades. That increased the food that sank to feed organisms on the sea floor (the benthos). In addition, less sea ice and a longer open-water season, enabled gray whales to spend more time feeding in the Chukchi and Bering Sea, gaining the energy needed for their 7-8 month fast, while enduring migration and reproduction.
Nonetheless, whenever gray whales approached peak abundances that may have exceeded their carrying capacity, they experienced sudden population crashes in 1987–1989, 1999–2000 and 2019–202 that NOAA has called an “Unusual Mortality Event” (illustration C). All the evidence suggests gray whales experience the classic ecological “boom and bust” dynamics (exemplified by the relationship between the lynx and snowshoe hare that’s taught in every 8th grade science class). The whales’ main prey (ampeliscid amphipods) can only feed a limited number of whales. As the whale populations increased beyond that level, they “eat themselves out of house and home”, the prey species crashes followed by whale numbers quickly crashing.
To counter the acknowledged positive effects of global warming, a recent paper (Stewart 2023) was compelled to push an unsupported narrative that global warming, not abundant whales, had reduced the ampeliscid amphipod prey. This led to numerous click-bait media headlines spreading misinformation about the gray whale deaths.
The bottom graphic highlights (red circles) the 2 main feeding hotspots that almost all gray whales now depend on. It is interesting to note that during the low sea levels of the last ice age, those hotspots were high and dry and relegated to Arctic tundra just 8-10,000 years ago. As sea levels rose, these hotspots became shallow seas with depths mostly less that 50 meters. It is that shallowness that allows more food to sink from the surface to the benthos before bacteria can decompose it, thus nurturing an abundance of sea floor organisms. In addition, the nourishment carried by the 3 major northbound currents further maintains these hotspots.
Stewart (2023) acknowledged that the loss of Bering Sea ice has perhaps enabled gray whales populations to grow beyond their pre-whaling maximums. However, apparently to grift the government climate crisis funding, he also offered a very contradictory narrative blaming global warming and less ice for reducing the whales’ prey. Despite research showing that less ice increased phytoplankton by 57% in 2 decades, Stewart reiterated to numerous media outlets that “With less ice, you get less algae, which is worse for the gray whale prey”.
Stewart (2023) was alluding to an unproven hypothesis, previously pushed by his co-author, that global warming reduces sea-ice-algae, algae that only grows on the bottom of sea ice. Climate alarmists have pushed the unsupported narrative for a decade that sea-ice-algae provides the critical food for the benthos food web. Click-bait media like ScienceNews headlined “Sea ice algae drive the Arctic food web”. What those grifters fail to share with the public is sea-ice-algae only contributes on average a meager 3% of all Arctic production, compared to the 97% provided by increasing phytoplankton where sea ice melts.
Furthermore, sea-ice-algae requires sunlight, and thick multi-year sea ice reduces photosynthesis. Due to the loss of multi-year ice, more transparent first year ice has nearly doubled since 1980, which increases sea-ice-algae production.
Finally, in their desperate attempt to link whale deaths to a climate crisis, Stewart (2023) cherry-picked the fact that less ice can change the speed of ocean currents and erode the sediments that large amphipods prefer. However, Stewart does not share that abundant amphipods prevent such erosion. Ampeliscid amphipods build mucus-lined tubes in the sand. As their density increases, individual tubes coalesce to form a mat that prevent currents from eroding away the sediments and thus preserving a stable environment for more abundant amphipods.
Yet again, it is the growing population of hungry gray whales that bulldoze those mats, reducing amphipod abundance, that enhance a classic natural boom and bust dynamic!
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Story tip – Kathy Hochul vetoes bill that would have sped up construction of a planned offshore wind depot after civic pressure – American Thinker
A wind depot? Not sure of the implication of the use of “depot”. Hopefully that’s meant to be negative but I don’t get it. Once I get it, I’ll use it. 🙂
A wind despot?
Whales, sea otters, bunny rabbits, mothers and apple pie all have great fan followings and a cheering press team to lead them on. Sea ice algae, not so much.
I personally will cheer for sea algae.
It might be the single most important organism on the planet!
I would vote for fungus and bacteria. They help to recycle dead organic matter.
Something to look forward to, eventually.
Well, there is the option of cremation. I’m not sure I like either.
” bunny rabbits“
This time tomorrow I will be listening to a presentation regarding an ongoing project restoring tiny bunnies to their native shrub-steppe environment in Washington State. Habitat loss and fragmentation led to the near extirpation of the Columbian Basin Pygmy Rabbit. In 2001, only 16 individuals remained. Today there about 300 in two locations.
Thanks for the post Jim. Interesting as always.
Great post. Nothing good ever happens when a species (here grey whales) exceeds its environmental carrying capacity. All the global warming nonsense in the world cannot change basic simple biology.
“All the global warming nonsense in the world cannot change basic simple biology.”
Are you sure about that? There is a lot of global warming nonsense and renewable energy fairy tales that require changing basic simple physics!
Basic simple physics seems to be winning the debate.
I think predator-prey, insect-agriculture (food), and similar models can go chaotic if the conditions are right. So it’s also not-so-simple chaos mathematics too.
Similarly, the BBC’s latest Planet Earth Attenborough doomfest is a joke, often reversing reality to push the climate narrative.
https://www.gbnews.com/celebrity/bbc-planet-earth-iii-facts-wildlife-deaths
Watching lions lounge beside a shrinking watering hole on Boston’s PBS was a fixture of my childhood.Creating content like that would give environmentalists a troubled outlook.
from that article:
Gee, he makes it sounds like a terrible thing. As Alex Epstein often says, the world wasn’t so nice to us before we had abundant, cheap energy.
Were we expecting anything less from Attenbollox? Or the BBC as it took time out from cheering on baby-beheading Hamas terrorists?
The Seattle Times is a big defender of marine mammals of all types. Over the top sometimes. Linked is a fascinating article on the “Sounders,” a group of migrating gray whales that stop off in Puget Sound, and a few very brave ones that navigate the intertidal zone of the Snohomish River near Everett, WA. Their goal is to dine on ghost shrimp, accessible to the whales in a very tight window of time. The payoff is huge; literally.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/gray-whales-learn-daring-feeding-strategy-in-puget-sound-digging-for-ghost-shrimp-at-high-tide/
Very nice Jim.
“optimal whale population has historically been between 18,000 and 22,000 individuals”
Optimal in what way for whom?.
Optimal for the Whales (and their prey).
Optimal refers to a population size that maximizes its utilization of the habitat’s available resources without reducing its carrying capacity, thus maintaining the whales maximum and most resilient population size!
Maybe but I doubt anyone knows the optimal population size for any species. Perhaps it makes the biologists feel smart that they can make that claim. And we now have climate change idiots telling us that the optimal population for humans is an order of magnitude less than now.
It’s a good paper although Jim Steele over emphasizes their discussion of alternative effects on the population. The prey-predator interactions would be expected to give an oscillation such as the Lynx/Hare example do to the Lotka-Volterra equation. However in the real world there can be other controlling variables which can lead to more complex, chaotic behavior. The authors point out several of these such as changes in the populations of the various algae, quantity of lipids etc due to the other changes in the environment.
Phil, since you are trying to defend Stewart et al 2023, please justify their claim that less sea ice “resulted in increased water-column productivity (7, 8) but has reduced the amount of particulate organic carbon that reaches the sea floor through pelagic-benthic coupling that is dependent on sinking ice-associated algae.”
They provided absolutely no evidence to prove that narrative!
They also provided absolutely no evidence that the sediments in the Chirikov Basin had been disrupted and less supportive of high lipid amphipods.
So why do you believe their arguments???
“They provided absolutely no evidence to prove that narrative!”
But it sounds smart- which apparently is all that is needed, as we see with the climate cult.
“As the Arctic has rapidly warmed, sea ice retreat has occurred progressively earlier in the spring, and the Bering and Chukchi seas have remained ice free for longer in the autumn (6). This has resulted in increased water-column productivity (7, 8) but has reduced the amount of particulate organic carbon that reaches the sea floor through pelagic-benthic coupling that is dependent on sinking ice-associated algae (5).”
They quote 4 papers as support.
They found the two major factors influencing the carrying capacity to be crustacean biomass and sea ice access. They observed a change in the size of the amphipods over time which has led to a decline in lower overall available biomass. The suggestion that their population will be subject to future fluctuations in the environment seems quite reasonable.
Phil, You are not thinking critically or honestly They only site one paper, their co-author Grebmeir (5). If you bothered to read Grebmeir’s paper, you would have seen Absolutley No Evidence to support their claim thatthere was “reduced amount of particulate organic carbon reaching the sea floor.”
Furthermore, they ignore the fact that much of the particulate organic carbon reaching the Chirikov amphipod beds also comes from the rich Anadyr Current.
Indeed the reduced carrying capacity was due to reduced crustacean biomass, but it was due to the increased amount of voracious whales not less sea ice. In fact what they reported was whale abundance increased during the years of less sea ice.
Your invalid attempts to justify all Stewart’s unsupported narratives to blame global warming and less sea ice for reduced crustacean biomass, is very very suspicious!
What I find suspicious is your ignoring fig 2 particularly 2D which is Crustacean Biomass vs Crustacean Abundance. The graph shows the Biomass decreasing even as the Abundance increases, hence their interpretation that there is a change in species distribution.
“This regime shift has likely contributed to declining per capita biomass of gray whale prey, which despite steady or increasing prey abundance has resulted in lower overall available biomass”.
Keep trying Phil, but you again fail to understand the issue because you transparently lack an understanding of the biology of whales and their prey, are just desperate to support Stewart’s global warming attribution. I asked you to show me how less sea caused less food to nourish the amphipods but you fail to address your blind beliefs at all. Now your try more misdirection away from the critical issues.
First no one is arguing that there has been a change available biomass. The question being addressed in my article and by Stewart 2023 why less biomass. Stewart is arguing it is the lack of sea ice is reducing nourishment to the the amphipods and changing the speed of ocean currents and thus affecting the sand’s grain size that can amphipod size and lipid content.But both their arguments are not supported by any evidence.
Whales will preferentially seek large amphipods. As they plow up the sea floor they disturb the protective mats the promote large and dense amphipod abundance. More whales more disturbance and less amphipods. It is a natural boom and bust dynamic
I have no such preconception, rather you believe that any explanation which contradicts your “blind beliefs” can’t be right.
Stewart argues that there has been a change in species distribution which has resulted in a loss of available biomass. They provided data for that, which you fail to acknowledge.
“More whales more disturbance and less amphipods.”
Except of course that the minimum in amphipod abundance corresponds to fewer whales not more.
LOL Duh I am no longer suspicious absolutely sure you ar clueless about the science.
Yes indeed, “ minimum in amphipod abundance corresponds to fewer whales not more.” That is precisely what boom and bust dynamics argue.
Despite your refusal or inability to address the issues presented in this article and your incessant misdirection, you totally ignore Stewart’s observed dynamics. I am stating to think you are not a trols but just really stupid.
Here are the facts that you mis-portray. Less sea ice opened up more of the sea floor to foraging by gray whales allowing gray whales to multiply and reach numbers far above what was deemed optimal. More Whales eat more amphipods reducing amphipod carrying capacity.
Just as you say, the result: minimum in amphipod abundance corresponds to fewer whales!
The issue you desperately avoid, is what’s the evidence that less sea ice caused less amphipods. Stewart already admits less ice allows more access to those feeding grounds.
I saw a convincing presentation a few years ago that presented data showing that the primary predators of the snowshoe hares are squirrels (mostly red squirrels) which gorge on baby hares. The author argued that Lynx populations don’t respond quickly enough to account for the hare cycle but squirrels do. At any rate, squirrels eat a heck of a lot of hares and the hare/lynx cycle that we were all taught is at the very least an oversimplification. https://www.hww.ca/en/wildlife/mammals/snowshoe-hare.html#:~:text=Snowshoe%20hares%20younger%20than%20two%20weeks%20of%20age%20are%20killed,the%2010%2Dyear%20population%20cycle.
There is probably some kind of moral to my story.
Squirrels? Interesting. Never would have thought that.
I’ve watched a Red Squirrel eat baby Black-capped Chickadees out of the nest, one by one, so I don’t doubt they would eat a baby bunny if they could catch it. Hares in general, though, are altricial and are fully furred and ready to hop when they are born – as the article you link supports.
Although I relish the image you have conjured up – ravaging red squirrels running down baby snowshoe hares – I think you are over interpreting the predation angle – Ground squirrels and Red Squirrels are credited only with significant killing of very young hares in the article cited:
“The snowshoe hare suffers from many diseases—viral, bacterial, and parasitic. It is also the victim of many predators: among the most common are the Canada lynx, red fox, coyote, mink, Great Horned Owl, and Northern Goshawk. Snowshoe hares younger than two weeks of age are killed primarily by red squirrels and ground squirrels.”
Still, thanks for the new information about the evils of Red Squirrels (they also make a mess of attic insulation where they store heaps of flammable spruce cones and chew on electrical wires). Nice to know they try to save the trees they live in from girdling by reducing the hare population. I guess the Snowshoe Hares are a primary predator of baby trees too – so there is a certain symmetry with the squirrels eating the baby hares.
I was taught the Lynx-Snowshoe Hare Cycle too, but learned later that it was a bit shonky, like most things I was taught. The available data set was very convenient for analysis by armchair biologists with preconceived notions about predator and prey populations. The current understanding of the complex interaction of food resources of both hares and lynx is much more interesting.
I did comprehend that the squirrels eat baby hares. The speaker I was referring to (not the cited article) stated specifically that the largest predator of hares by numbers eaten, was the squirrel family. In my experience, dead baby hares seldom grow into adult hares. When a large number of babies are eaten, populations of most species will decline, no matter how well they hop, . Nobody would seek to diminish the effects of bear predation on deer numbers by pointing out that bears primarily eat baby deer which, like hares, are precocial. But, I did like your admonition that the hare cycle is complicated for many reasons.
I haven’t heard your speaker or read any supporting papers, but it is an interesting enough claim to put some effort into following it up. I live in Queensland – no squirrels at all and their importation is banned – but we do have introduced European Hares. Their young disappear quite quickly too and I wonder where. Presumably birds, foxes (also introduced), feral cats, and carpet pythons do most of the predation, but it is noticeable. One week they are all over the place and the next they are gone.
I’m the kind of ‘nobody’ who might argue that bear predation on baby deer is not especially important. The loss of a reproductive age female is a much larger loss in terms of population dynamics, especially as age at first reproduction usually drives population increase and increased competition for food suggests a doe will mature later and in poorer condition if all the fawns survived.
I just like to argue, though, so don’t take it personally – it helps me review my thoughts and see what I actually think. What I think is that in general, most mortality in wild animal populations is in the young and if one predator doesn’t get them, then another will – otherwise they would eat themselves out of house and home.
Anyway, I really appreciate the story about the squirrels – a very interesting addition to the lynx-hare system. Thanks.
Nice post as usual, Jim! Unfortunately, it is far too full of facts and data to be understood by alarmists! In future posts please try to include more emotion; especially anger, spite and envy; the favorites of eco-wackos everywhere!
By the way, are there any more videos coming out soon? My continuing education program is suffering from withdrawals!
A few medical issues like covid plus family visits slowed me down.But I plan to do more.
Any topics you would like?
With less ice you get less algae ..
How much more dishonest can you get?
All wildlife species go through boom and bust cycles. Everything in nature constantly changes and varies in complex ways we hardly understand- especially “the climate” or better “the many climates”. Anyone who wants stability in nature had best give up that hope- it’s just another harking back to some phony golden age that never existed.
I remember seeing such a chart for rabbits and lynx when I was much younger…
Maybe we need such a chart for CO2, plants (food) and temperature?
Great article Jim – I never would have guessed that Grey Whales depended on benthic amphipods. Always great to learn something new – and BCBill’s comment educated me about Red Squirrels eating baby Snowshoe Hares – so two new feeding interactions learned before coffee – this could be a good day.