What Can We Do For Starving Arctic Wildlife?

Famine has hit the Arctic region, all up and down the food chain. And just "letting Nature take its course" is no longer an option.

Folks, there is little question that famine conditions have struck the Pacific side of the Arctic region. We here in the Puget Sound region of the Pacific Northwest are being faced with the bodies of emaciated gray whales washing up on our shores--so many of them that local residents have been requested to bring some of the carcasses onto their property during their decomposition. Islands off the coast of Alaska are being greeted by the site of thousands of dead puffins washing up on their beaches--all of whom have reportedly died from starvation and disease. We have all seen heart-wrenching videos of starving polar bears and other land mammals attempting to find food in garbage dumps and elsewhere in human villages, on both sides of the Bering Sea. Fortunately, the most recently-recorded polar bear, a two-year-old female up in Siberia, was lucky enough to be captured and transported to a zoo for food and medical care before she succumbed to malnutrition; but she may be the exception to the rule. What is causing the famine conditions among Arctic wildlife communities; and are there steps we can take for disaster relief for these northern animal communities?

Well, folks, I am neither a marine biologist nor a climate scientist; but I can read and comprehend on a college level; and it appears that the problem must be addressed by looking at the way things are going on the level of Arctic food chains. For the puffins' situation, the dietary hierarchy goes: Puffins/other marine bird species-->small fish/invertebrates/shellfish-->smaller fish-->zooplankton (quasi-microscopic animal species)-->phytoplankton (microscopic plant/algae species, including those cute diatom critters we studied in high school). The direction of the arrows indicates who eats whom; and it appears, according to one summary of a 2015 study at Oregon State University, the food crisis goes straight down to the phytoplankton base.

Without paraphrasing too extensively, phytoplankton are most abundant at the upper latitudes of both the planet's hemispheres (the Arctic and Antarctic regions). Historically, phytoplankton reproduce most quickly, forming blooms, when Arctic ocean water levels begin warming during the spring (or fall, in the Southern Hemisphere), prompting fish and other animals higher up the food chain to migrate to those regions in warming seasons. However, in recent years, the oceans in those regions have begun both warming, and churning through wind currents, at earlier times--early winter, in fact--triggering phytoplankton blooms far earlier than usual, before the traditional periods of fish migration. Plus, phytoplankton are very short-lived (they have to reproduce within a couple of days before dying); hence, by the time early spring rolls around, the phytoplankton blooms are over and done with, resulting in far less food for zooplankton, migrating fish, and so on throughout the food web. The result: the earlier bloom-and-die behavior of the Arctic phytoplankton is throwing off the schedule of migratory predator species all the way up to the puffins. Species at each level are faced with the choice of dying for lack of food; or migrating increasingly farther north in hopes of finding prey still thriving on a thrown-off schedule. This is one way that climate change is impacting the lives of fish, marine mammals, and Arctic/Antarctic land species, resulting in record die-offs of many species as they struggle to figure out and adapt to the changing water-temperature calendar.

Anyhow, I think this blog post may require a sequel post, as I research what might be done to help Arctic predator species. I don't know if operating food banks for polar bears and puffins is a viable solution or not (we don't want to domesticate entire species of birds or bears, after all; so that would have to be a stopgap measure, at most). There are also possibilities for restocking fish in the Arctic, as well as reconfiguring the dam systems on rivers to reduce obstacles to the annual salmon migration phases. There's no question, however, that the problem needs to be looked at in terms of the entire ecosystem and food web in that part of the world. The ocean's phytoplankton species are the foundation of its food chain; they need to be where they can absorb mineral nutrients for their own survival (most especially in cooler, circulating water); and right now, the phytoplankton are confused as hell, and throwing off everyone else's schedule in turn.