Killer whales are migrating farther north as the Arctic
Ocean's ice cover melts, threatening the livelihood of the native Inuit
who traditionally depend on fishing for their food, Canadian
researchers have said.
"We found a really direct correlation with
decreasing ice in the Arctic and more observations of killer whales so
we think they are moving further into the Arctic because of less ice,"
Steven Ferguson, a scientist at the arctic division of the Canadian
fishing ministry, told AFP.
Ferguson's team last year was notified of spottings of the black
and white orca, (Orcinus orca, popularly called killer whales) by
scientists, tour operators and Inuit fishermen who criss-cross Hudson
Bay, a North Canadian inland sea bigger than France.
In the 1980s, experts counted between five and 10 summer spottings
of orca each year in the same area. That number jumped to about 30 last
year, the Canadian researchers said.
During the same period, the ice cover in the Arctic has sharply
declined. By 2040 the ice could be completely gone during the summer,
according to a study by Canadian and US researchers recently published
in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Ferguson's team was unable to identify where the orca seen in
Hudson Bay were coming from, but they said it was probably from the
northern Atlantic Ocean, near Iceland or Nova Scotia.
The researchers also were unsure what was on the
menu for the giant creatures, which are not true whales but instead the
largest members of the dolphin family.
"We don't know for sure what the killer whales are eating. Some
killer whales eat fish but we don't think there is that much good fish
food for them in the Arctic. So we are working on the assumption that
they are probably eating belugas, narwhals, bowhead and maybe seals as
well," Ferguson said.
Their migration is worrying fishermen of the Inuit, the indigenous
Eskimo people of the region, he said in discussions of the research led
in cooperation with the University of Manitoba.
"It's a real concern for the hunters. They think it is competition
for their food (because) the whales that they would be shooting and
eating would be attacked by the killer whales," he said.
Source http://physorg.com/news88610812.html
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