Scientists to review Alaska seal status in 2008
Ribbon seal. (Photo: Mike Cameron, NOAA's National Marine Mammal Laboratory.)
Scientists are being asked to make tough decisions in the face of an uncertain future climate.
In 2008, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA began reviewing the status of Alaska’s ribbon seals to decide whether to list them as endangered. The process began when an environmental group petitioned on behalf of the seals.
Peter Boveng: The premise of their petition is that the sea ice, with which the seals are strongly associated, is endangered by the warming trend in climate, and therefore the seals must be endangered.
That’s Peter Boveng of NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center. He mentioned many uncertainties about ribbon seals.
Peter Boveng: Unfortunately, we don’t know very well how many there are.
The seals are known to breed on sea ice – but not the same Arctic ice we’ve been reading about in the news.
Peter Boveng: This is different ice than the Arctic sea ice that has gotten a lot of press in the climate change context. That’s the ice in the central Arctic basin. The ice that we really associate these seals with is in more southerly, sub-Arctic seas.
He said these scientists will compile information on these seals – and work with Alaska natives to supplement the science. He added that NOAA is required by law to respond to the petition within one year, in this case by the end of 2008.
There have been scientific predictions about ice in the central Arctic disappearing entirely in the summer. However, Boveng said that these seals breed in a different region of the Arctic than what has been in the news. The seals breed and molt on the edge of the sea ice in the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk.
Peter Boveng: It’s probably reasonable to expect that the winter ice in those areas will decline as well if the climate continues to warm as it has, but the models that people are using for sea ice so far don’t predict that that ice is going away.
He said scientists are confident that ribbon seals have not been depleted to a very low number so far, adding:
Peter Boveng: There are some population estimate numbers being tossed around. The usual one you see for the world population is about 240,000.
NOAA also agreed to review the status of three other ice seals for possible listing – bearded, spotted and ringed seals. Boveng said NOAA will be conducting comprehensive reviews of these species of ice-associated seals, but unless they receive petitions to list these other species, the reviews will be conducted independent of Endangered Species Act requirements. Although all three species are associated with sea ice for parts of their annual cycles, they use ice in different ways and may respond differently to the effects of climate change, hunting, and oil and gas development and production, according to Boveng.
Our thanks to NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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