Climate Change Endangers Bowhead Whale Habitat

An international team led by researchers from the University of Adelaide and the University of Copenhagen reconstructed an 11,700-year ecological baseline for bowhead whales, which are a threatened Arctic native species.

Using computer models, fossils, and whaling records, the team mapped the location and size of suitable summer foraging habitat for bowhead whales over the entire Holocene, finding that until recently it remained constant despite significant climatic fluctuations.

However, they predict that future climate change will erode somewhere between 65-75 per cent of this foraging habitat by the end of the 21st century. In the Sea of Okhotsk, which is home to one of only four populations of bowhead whales, viable summer habitat is likely to vanish entirely by 2060.

The reason for the decline is the collapse of a tight association between bowhead whales and summer sea ice cover.

“Bowhead whales have preferred to forage amongst sea ice for many millennia,” said lead author Mr Nicholas Freymueller, from the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute and the University of Copenhagen’s Globe Institute.

“However, Arctic sea ice has declined significantly in recent decades, and this is set to accelerate in coming decades, causing habitats where bowhead whales currently congregate in large numbers to be lost.”