Sep. 20, 2013 — Over the past 30 years, polar bears have increasingly exchanged ringed seal with harp seal and hooded seal in their diet. This change exposes the polar bear to more contaminants, according to a recent international study.
Researchers expect the climate to become warmer in the future and predict that climate change will have a significant impact on the Arctic. How will a warming Arctic affect the polar bears?
The East Greenlandic population of polar bears resides in an area, where the Arctic sea ice is expected to disappear very late. However, the decline in the ice sheet here occurs at a rate of almost 1% per year, one of the highest rates measured in the entire Arctic region.
How does this affect the prey of the polar bears -- and, in turn, the polar bears' intake of contaminants? An international team of researchers set out to explore this question. The team counted researchers from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Aarhus University (Denmark) and a number of Canadian institutions including: Dalhousie University, Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, University of Windsor, Carleton University and the National Water Research Institute.
The researchers studied the fatty acid profiles in the adipose tissue from a unique material of 310 polar bears hunted by East Greenland Inuits from the Scoresbysund area in the years from 1984 to 2011. The composition of fatty acids in the fat tissue of the polar bears namely reflects the profile of fatty acids in their diet.
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