Is it madness?

So today while I was working, I listened to a couple of different programs. One I LOVED, it was about the Colossal squid that was finally captured live in 2008. I'm such a cephalopod geek but I hadn't seen this program yet. I thought it was great! It's also funny because that shows the realities of this type of work. You get to work with a lot of dead things. lol xP

Then there was a show about the invasion of Humboldt squid. It was really interesting because they're invading areas that they haven't previously been before, and the spread of their range matches the temperature changes happening due to global warming. The squid are taking out fish stocks, so fishermen are pulling up squid where before they were pulling up traditional catches. As much as I might take fishermen's claims with skepticism, I do believe that they are harming fish stocks. It's not like the fish in those areas are prepared to deal with swarms of these squid in these areas, and they are able to reproduce very quickly.

The next thing I watched, from a different source, was about the invasion of giant jellyfish. That caught my attention because I remember from being a groundfish observer seeing tonnes of jellyfish being hauled on board of one of the pollock catcher vessels I was on. We'd pull up the giant trawl net and in certain locations it would be just brimming with jellyfish. Sometimes they'd just dump the net back into the water and start over. Other times they'd pull it up and jellyfish would be just hanging off the lines and filling up the boat before the net even reached the deck. After the net was emptied below decks they'd literally be sweeping jellyfish back into the Bering. This boat normally did no at sea sorting, all fish, bycatch and all were just dumped into cold water tanks to be sorted at the processing plant. Some of these catches were so full of jellyfish that the crew would come down and have to start doing a fast sort of the fish to get rid of the majority of the jellyfish. I'd get my sample totes (1 ton each) filled with fish, and I remember endlessly scooping jellyfish out into my little baskets to weigh and count them.

The jellyfish in this show were different as the species wasn't the same, but the show did mention a jellyfish invasion of a different sort in the Bering Straight. The cause of this jellyfish invasion in Japan was also due to global warming and increasing water temperatures. It was also due to urbanization near coastlines and overfishing, but like with the Humboldt squid it is related to our activity.

I wonder if this might cause more pressure from the fishing industry to fix things. I'd say that they would have more clout than a bunch of biologists saying that something is at risk that has a less tangible price tag attached to it.

...because sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough.

So while researching what my potential advisers are studying, I started reading about climate change effect on walrus. I'm interested in ice associated seals and climate change. I wonder if I could study under her, but not study walruses. It's the same general idea.

Anyway! The articles I've read are what I expect, climate change and warming waters are bad. The ice retreats and the walrus don't have the areas to congregate like they need. They aren't long distance swimmers or deep divers, they need ice to rest on and dive in shallower water. The ice retreats, and where it is left the water is too deep for the walrus to dive. Males generally make longer swims to shores, but females and calves stay on ice. Now more females and calves make the journey to the shore, but it's obviously hard on calves. They also end up congregating in larger numbers than normal, and so there are more casualties from stampedes to water. Calves are especially susceptible to injury or death in this. There is also a lot of calf abandonment and additional physiological stress. So on and so forth. Bad for walruses.

So. I find a recent article talking about how global warming is helping the walrus! Wow, all that melting ice sure helps because it's exposing all sorts of good stuff for the walrus to eat. Now, maybe some of that is true. Perhaps some of the melting ice actually did free up some new places to eat. But really? Something that's been beat to death by research articles as being bad is now something that is helpful? Perhaps they mean that global warming has helped the walrus population from it's decline after whaling, but they don't necessarily mean that global warming continues to be helpful. I might give benefit of the doubt. But I can just imagine people using that as a case for not having to worry about how climate change affects ice associated marine mammals. Bah.

Especially since the whole point of the article was that global warming is freeing up new places for walruses to eat! No. Really. It's making it so they are running out of places to eat.

(I need marine mammal icons. More marine biology icons in general... hrm.)