March 20,
2019 by Bob Yirka, Phys.org report
A team of
researchers with the Keiki Kohola Project and California State University
reports that a recent "blob" of warm water in the Pacific gives
marine scientists a preview of the impact of climate change on humpback whales.
In their paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the
group describes their study of the whales and what they found.
Humpback
whales were once hunted to the point that they became endangered, but several
decades ago, international
laws were
enacted to protect them, and they rebounded—these measures were so successful
that the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service took the whales off the endangered species list back
in 2016. But now, it appears the whales face a new threat—climate change.
In a new
effort, the researchers studied the reproductive habits of humpback whales that
migrate between the waters off the Alaskan coast and those that surround the
Hawaiian Islands. They had noted that in 2013, a giant mass or "blob"
of warm water had
formed in the Gulf of Alaska, and over the course of the next six years, slowly
made its way south. Prior research had shown that temperatures in the blob were
up to 3 degrees C warmer than surrounding water—high enough to kill krill and
other sea creatures that serve as food for humpback whales. This led the
researchers to embark on a study of the impact of the blob on the humpback
whales.
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