THE FATE OF OLD SEA ICE

A few years ago sea ice covered a quarter of the Arctic Ocean. Now: 2 percent.
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Aerial view of the edge of the sea ice in Nunavut, Canada. Credit: Doc Searls via Wikimedia Commons .

  
The latest stats on 2012's sea ice in the Arctic are out from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The winter of 2012 was not the lowest year since satellite monitoring began 34 years ago—but it was well below the average.
  
And the trend continues downward... as you can see in the graph below showing March sea ice extent since 1979.
  

Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center.

  
Worse is the fate of old sea ice. 
  
Ice older than four years used to make up about a quarter of the wintertime sea ice cover in the Arctic. It now constitutes only 2 percent. From the NSIDC page:
  

Ice age data this year show that the ice cover remains much thinner than it was in the past, with a high proportion of first-year ice, which is thin and vulnerable to summer melt. After the record low minimum of 2007 the Arctic lost a significant amount of older, thicker ice, both from melting and from movement of ice out of the Arctic the following winter. In the last few years, the melt and export of old ice was less extreme than in 2007 and 2008, and multiyear ice started to re-grow, with second and third-year ice increasing over the last three years.

 

Arctic sea ice. Credit: Pink floyd88 a via Wikimedia Commons.

  
After the near-record summertime melt of 2011 there was a decline in two-year-old ice. And although some thicker three- and four-year-old ice managed to survive, the oldest, thickest ice—the stuff more than four years old—continued to decline. 

   

Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy J. Maslanik and M. Tschudi, University of Colorado.

  
In the map above you can see how much of 2012's winter sea ice was new ice—just formed this year (purple). And how there's virtually nothing left of the old sea ice that was born five or more years ago (white).
  

Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy J. Maslanik and M. Tschudi, University of Colorado.

  
The graph above shows the trend since 1983... how much old ice there used to be and what an endangered species it is now.

TWICE AS MANY DOLPHINS, WHALES STILL DYING IN GULF

Stranded spinner dolphin. Credit: qnr via Flickr.

  

The latest NOAA report on unusual strandings of whales and dolphins in the northern Gulf of Mexico finds they're still dying at twice the normal rate 18 months after BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Map of strandings in relation to Deepwater Horizon well. Click for larger version. Credit: NOAA.

  

As you can see in the map above, the most heavily oiled shoreline still corresponds with the most dead whales and dolphins.

Bottlenose dolphins are shown as circles and other species as squares. Premature, stillborn, or neonatal bottlenose dolphins (with actual or estimated lengths of less than 115 cm/45 inches) are shown as a circle with a black dot inside. 

Pink points mark the most recent week of data. Green points mark are all other cases since 1 January 2011.

 

All stranded cetaceans (dolphins and whales) from Franklin County, FL to the Texas/ Louisiana border. Credit: NOAA.

Here you can see how the numbers of strandings have not yet stabilized or even begun to decline. In some cases they're still growing. 

The magenta-colored bars mark strandings per month in the year 2010. The ivory-colored bars mark strandings per month so far this year.

Credit: NOAA.

This graph shows stranded premature, stillborn, or neonatal bottlenose dolphins.

In my Mother Jones article The BP Cover-Up last year, I wrote about the kind of long-term problems the Gulf might face not just from oil but from extreme quantities of oil in very deep water, as well as from chemical dispersant, including dispersant injected into very deep water.

Sadly, it seems that cetaceans—past, present, and future—may be bearing some of those burdens.

Beached sperm whale. Credit: Rachel Denny Clow, Corpus Christi Caller-Times/AP.

  
You might be interested in these other posts describing other scientific findings in the wake of last year's Gulf catastrophe:

• Canadian Seabirds Walloped by BP's Oil
• Gulf Oil Hammers Fish
• Deepwater Horizon's Uncounted Victims
• The BP Cover-Up

CANADIAN SEABIRDS WALLOPED BY BP'S OIL

Northern gannet. Credit: Alan D. Wilson via Wikimedia Commons.

  
A new paper in early view in Biology Letters—a journal of the Royal Society—finds that Canadian migrant seabirds suffered disproportionately the lethal effects of BP's oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico last year.

Northern gannets (Morus bassanus) suffered the highest oiling among beach-wrecked birds recovered last year.

These are the largest seabirds in the Atlantic, who migrate from their Canadian breeding colonies to overwinter in the Gulf of Mexico. Adults return to the breeding colonies by about March—earlier than immature birds.

Winter positions of northern gannets from 4 of 6 North American colonies, where adults and chicks were banded and adults and juveniles tracked. Mean winter (Jan–Feb) positions from adults carrying GLS (2004–2010) and final positions from 18 juveniles with PTTs (2008–2010). Deepwater Horizon site (star) and associated slicks (grey) indicated. Credit: William Montevecchi, et al. Biology Letters. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.0880.

  
Due to these migration timetables, most of the northern gannets killed in the Gulf last year were likely immature birds.

Which means the real impact of their deaths will not show up until those birds would have reached sexual maturity—at about 5 or 6 years old—or betwen now and far beyond. Gannets can live at least 21 years.

From the paper:

Most adult gannets had returned to Canadian colonies by 20 April 2010, although more than 50,000 immature gannets were in the Gulf at the time and suffered oil-related mortality. Hence, two probable outcomes are (i) a lagged (likely difficult to detect) population decrease or (ii) mortality will be buffered by age-related life-history processes.  

A bonded pair of northern gannets. Credit: Al Wilson via Wikimedia Commons.

  
The authors found the story grew even more ominous when they compared numbers on how many gannets were overwintering in the Gulf of Mexico—numbers that differed hugely depending on the technology used:

• Old-fashioned technology: recovery of banded birds
• Modern technology: bird-borne global location sensors (GLS) and satellite tags (Platform Terminal Transmitters, PTTs)

The newer technologies revealed more than twice as many gannets overwintering in the Gulf. From the paper:

Extrapolation from band recoveries indicates that 13,318 adult gannets winter in the Gulf of Mexico, much less than the 66,124 estimate based on GLS data... PTT positions suggest an estimated population of 52,509 immature gannets in the Gulf compared with 41,587 extrapolated from banding recoveries. Extrapolating tracking data for all gannet age classes more than doubles the estimated number of birds using the Gulf, from 54,905 to 118,633 birds. 

Oiled gannet washed ashore on Cape Cod. Credit: Dennis Minsky at SeaNet.

  
Add to that the fact that dead or oiled birds found ashore represent only a fraction of the birds dead or dying at sea. From the paper:

Seabirds are among the most obvious and immediate indicators of wildlife and environmental damage during marine pollution events. In these circumstances, seabird mortality has been assessed by counting dead and dying animals along coasts. These assessments are biased towards animals that die near accessible well-populated coastlines, and as offshore winds and currents can reduce coastal-deposition of carcasses that sink after a few days, mortality is inevitably underestimated.

The authors note that gannets may be shifting their winter range to the Gulf in response to overfishing of menhaden—their primary winter prey—in Atlantic waters.

Northern gannet in flight. Credit: Andreas Trepte via Wikimedia Commons.

 
And the authors noted possible signs of oil fouling on birds returning to their Canadian breeding colonies:

In April 2011, at their southernmost colony, Cape St. Mary's Newfoundland, gannets on inaccessible cliff-sites were observed and photographed with dark soiled plumage that looked like oil, but this could not be verified by chemical analysis. Tracking, survival and physiological measurements at gannet colonies during 2011 are evaluating other potential repercussions and informing management about conservation concerns.

The paper:

• William Montevecchi, David Fifield, Chantelle Burke, Stefan Garthe, April Hedd, Jean-François Rail, Gregory Robertson. Tracking long-distance migration to assess marine pollution impact. Biology Letters. 2011. DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2011.088.

SWEATERS FOR OILED PENGUINS

Example of a penguin sweater knit by New Zealanders to keep sick, oiled penguins warm. Via the Bay of Plenty Times.

  
From the Bay of Plenty Times comes the news that knitters in New Zealand are making sweaters for little blue penguins (aka fairy penguins) oiled in the wreck of the cargo ship Rena. 

Nearly 1,300 birds are known dead from the spill already, most penguins. From the Bay of Plenty Times:

A Napier factory has sent a care package off to Tauranga—full of tiny woolly penguin pajamas. The PJ package came about after Napier's Design Spun general manager Brendan Jackson was contacted last week by a local woman whose daughter had been involved in the oil response unit. The recovery crews were coming across oil-smeared penguins who, trying to preen their feathers clean, became more ill.

The Massey University Wildlife Recovery team she was part of had cast their minds back to a similar spill in Tasmania some years ago, where locals knitted pure wool jumpers to be put on the little blue penguins during the recovery phase to prevent them getting at their feathers before they could be washed clean.

It worked, so the word went out to Design Spun, which has a "yarn club'' of devoted knitters. Within a week the four to five dozen bright little jumpers were all knitted and the last of them were sent to Tauranga yesterday.

Some even have messages including one, which has the words "Cut Down on Oil Use'' embroidered lovingly on the front.

Here's the pattern if—like mine—your needles are practically jumping up and down at the prospect.

Penguin sweater via.

NEW ZEALAND'S WOES GROW

THE X-RAY ORIGAMI OF TAKAYUKI HORI

   

Takayuki Hori's unique work won first place in the 2010 Mitsubishi Chemical Junior Designer Competition. Using a process called Oritsunagumono—defined as 'things folded and connected'—he portrayed eight endangered Japanese species. The only color in Hori's pieces comes from the ubiquitous marine garbage swallowed by his wild origami birds and reptiles.

Via designboom and monogocoro.