Tag: alaska

Marine Heat Wave Crashes Alaskan Crab Fishery – Again

CBS News:

The crisis first began in early 2022, after biologists discovered an estimated 10 billion crabs disappeared — a 90% plunge in the population.

“The first reaction was, is this real? You know, we looked at it and it was almost a flat line,” said Ben Daly, a research coordinator with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

A recent survey of the species showed little sign of a rebound.

“Environmental conditions are changing rapidly,” Daly told CBS News last year when the snow crab season was canceled for the first time ever. “We’ve seen warm conditions in the Bering Sea the last couple of years, and we’re seeing a response in a cold-adapted species, so it’s pretty obvious this is connected. It is a canary in a coal mine for other species that need cold water.” 

According to new research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a marine heat wave linked to climate change impacted the snow crabs’ food supply and drove them to starvation.

Biologists hope this second round of suspensions will give the remaining snow crab population time to bulk back up.

But with the climate threat only growing, there’s concern the snow crabs, along with the industry that depends on them, will continue to shrink.

“I’m a fourth-generation fisherman,” Songstad said. “I would like to say that this is gonna be here for my kids, but the reality is we’re a dying breed and if we keep going the way we’re going, there’s not going to be any of us left.” 

For one Michigan legislator, evidence of a conspiracy.

Asterisk: Matt Maddock is a Michigan legislator and husband of Meshawn Maddock, former Chair of the Michigan Republican Party under indictment as a “fake elector” in an elaborate scheme to (allegedly) defraud voters.

Extinction: Not Just for Polar Bears

This week another massive beaching of walruses in the Alaskan Arctic. I did video on this a few years ago that is still relevant. The science denial media would like images of suffering animals to just go away, and for you to stop thinking about it all the time, dammit.

Media Matters:

The Daily Caller tried to “debunk” the “myth” that a recent mass walrus beaching is connected to global warming, even though scientists say the walruses have crowded onshore because they cannot find a resting place on Arctic sea ice, which has declined significantly as the Earth warms.

An October 1 Daily Caller article titled “Myth Debunked: Arctic Walrus Beachings Are Nothing New” promoted zoologist Susan Crockford’s claims that a recent massive beaching of around 35,000 walruses on a single Alaskan shore has nothing to do with climate change. To support her claim, Crockford cherry-picked two instances of walrus beachings from the 1970s.

However, Biologist Anatoly Kochnev of Russia’s Pacific Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography told NBC News that extended beachings of this size only began occurring in the late 1990s, adding: “The reason is global warming.”  Vox.com’s Brad Plumer further reported that this “appears to be the largest ever observed in northern Alaska, though NOAA is still trying to verify the exact numbers.” The current beaching is so vast that the Federal Aviation Authority is re-routing flights in order to avoid setting off a stampede.

In six of the past eight years, all of the floating sea ice in the Chukchi Sea (the region of the Arctic near the current haul-out) that walruses need to rest in between swims has completely melted away by mid-September, according to Chadwick Jay, head of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pacific walrus program.

In the Daily Caller article, Crockford even noted that mass walrus beachings occurred in 2009, 2011 and 2014, but dismissed them simply because they “did not coincide with the lowest levels of Arctic summer sea ice” in 2007 and 2012.

However, every one of these years had much less Arctic sea ice than the historical average, contributing to the extended beachings.

Continue reading “Extinction: Not Just for Polar Bears”