• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska March 14, 2023
U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse March 14, 2023
$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’ March 14, 2023
UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’ March 9, 2023
Biden Cuts Fossil Subsidies, But Oil and Gas Still Lines Up for Billions March 9, 2023
Next
Prev

Ducks give lowdown on Pacific changes

June 18, 2016
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

Tracking eider ducks with satellite transmitters as they seek to stock up on food before the Arctic winter gives scientists a deeper insight into shifts in ocean ecosystems.

LONDON, 18 June, 2016 – Climate change may be starting to affect the marine ecosystems in the coldest parts of the North Pacific and the Arctic Circle. And the people who can monitor what’s happening are ornithologists.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
Subscribe

They watch what the eider ducks – truly ducks, but sea-going – do in the moulting season. Since the ducks need to feed, and the late summer moult is stressful, where they choose to float in the water is as good a guide as any to where the molluscs are.

Matt Sexson, a wildlife biologist at the US Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Centre, and colleagues report in The Condor: Ornithological Applications journal, published by the American Ornithologists’ Union and Cooper Ornithological Society, that they caught eiders during the breeding season on land, implanted a satellite transmitter, monitored the bird’s  recovery, and then released the spectacled eider (Somateria fischeri) back into the wild.

Moulting areas

They watched where the birds chose to stock up on calories for the Arctic winter, and then compared their latest data with satellite telemetry from the mid-1990s. What they found was that, in the intervening two decades, two of the birds’ favoured primary moulting areas had shifted.

Eiders feed on cold-water, bottom-dwelling invertebrates. So the presence of eiders on the surface indicates a shift in ecosystems far below. And it really is far below; eiders have been known to dive 70 metres to gather bivalve molluscs.

“It’s easier to track marine predators than it is to track their prey,” Sexson says. “It’s tough to speculate on the connection with climate change because the data are so sparse, but we know that the North Pacific is changing.

“Eiders provide a readily available indicator
that changes are occurring
”

“There’s a lot of corresponding evidence that together all says something big is happening here, and eiders provide a readily available indicator that changes are occurring.”

Warming temperatures in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Siberia seem to indicate a change in the submarine ecosystem, and additional evidence comes from the California gray whale, which has expanded its range northward into the Chukchi Sea across the Arctic Circle. Pacific walruses selectively feed in the Bering Sea, another indirect indicator of riches on the sea bottom.

The jury is still out. The scientists say they need to know more about eider habits and more about the nature of change below the surface. There could be factors at work independent of climate change.

But there is already research to suggest that a warming Arctic creates problems for the species that exploit the region’s resources.

Ocean chemistry

And seabirds well to the south are responding to change. The fish of northern waters are on the move, and changing temperatures and ocean chemistry as a consequence of human combustion of fossil fuels puts many aspects of commercial fishery at risk.

So the scientists at least tentatively put the shift in hunting grounds down to changes below the surface.

The duck whose down gave a name to a quilted bedspread that keeps the world warm may yet prove an indicator of global warming too. But the authors make a more cautious claim.

They report: “Assuming that spectacled eiders moulted in areas where environmental conditions met requirements for feather growth and survival, and that shifts in their distribution mirrored changes in these environments, we interpreted observed shifts in marine moulting areas as indicators of ecosystem change.” – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
47
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
27
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
31

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Behrat/Wikimedia Commons

Hawaii Firm Turns Home Water Heaters into Grid Batteries

March 14, 2023
418
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board/flickr

$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’

March 14, 2023
209
David Dodge, Green Energy Futures/flickr

U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

March 14, 2023
148
EcoAnalytics

Canadians Want Strong Emissions Cap Regulations, Not More Missed Targets

March 14, 2023
109
moerschy / Pixabay

Fringe Conspiracy Theories Target 15-Minute City Push in Edmonton, Toronto

February 22, 2023
1.6k
U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
103

Recent Posts

Raysonho/wikimedia commons

Purolator Pledges $1B to Electrify Last-Mile Delivery

March 14, 2023
67
United Nations

UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’

March 10, 2023
91
Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

Biden Cuts Fossil Subsidies, But Oil and Gas Still Lines Up for Billions

March 10, 2023
181
jasonwoodhead23/flickr

First Nation Scorches Imperial Oil, Alberta Regulator Over Toxic Leak

March 8, 2023
373
MarcusObal/wikimedia commons

No Climate Risk Targets for Banks, New Guides for Green Finance as 2 Federal Agencies Issue New Rules

March 8, 2023
240
FMSC/Flickr

Millions Face Food Insecurity as Horn of Africa Braces for Worst Drought Ever

March 8, 2023
251
Next Post

US wildlife needs corridors to escape heat

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}