The Gulf of Maine is warming, and its whales are disappearing
Whales face a perilous situation as rapidly rising water temperatures affect their food sources, habitats, and migration patterns, College of the Atlantic Steven K. Katona Chair in Marine Sciences Dr. Sean Todd tells National Public Radio as part of their series, From Miami To Maine: Adapting To a Changing Climate.
By Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Peter Breslow, Ed McNulty, Avery Ellfeldt | NPR
Temperatures in the gulf — which stretches from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia — are climbing for two principal reasons, researchers say. First, rising air temperatures and greenhouse gas concentrations are causing oceanic warming worldwide. The U.N. says this warming has given way to a new phenomenon in the oceans: marine heat waves. Second, ice melt in Greenland is pumping fresh water out of the arctic, which has disturbed normal ocean currents in the region.
Andrew Pershing, the chief scientific officer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, says these changing patterns are bringing warmer currents into the area, which disrupts whales’ prey: herring and sandlace fish, among other species.
“As we see this food web start to become disrupted and start to change, we’re seeing changes in where the whales are feeding,” Pershing says. As a result, whales are moving further north toward Canada in search of food — a shift that comes with a dangerous set of consequences.
With their changing migration patterns, the whales are increasingly navigating waters that haven’t yet been adapted to protect them — and they’re dying because of it.
“From a whale’s perspective it matters greatly,” says Sean Todd, a researcher at the College of the Atlantic, where he studies the diets of whales in the Gulf of Maine. It matters, he says, because whales have a particular “energy budget” that sustains them while migrating long distances.
“If you increase the energy expenditure a whale has to undergo to get to its food, then the animal does not meet its calorific needs. And if it’s a female, that could very likely result in a failure of pregnancy.”
Todd warns that shifting migration patterns could mean “lower reproductive rates” for whales in the gulf, which risks bringing their populations “down to endangered status.”