"On thin ice in the Arctic"

From inrich.com (Richmond, VA)

CHARLOTTESVILLE - The polar bear has become the furry face of climate change in the Arctic.

The bear is deserving, but other animals -- particularly the walrus and a living sausage called the ribbon seal -- are in even worse peril, a University of Virginia researcher says.

"Polar bears are very familiar to people," said G. Carleton Ray, "but actually they are not as endangered as these seals and walruses."

Ray, 79, has been studying animals in the Bering Sea region since the late 1950s. His wife and fellow marine ecologist, Jerry McCormick-Ray, 64, has been working there since the early 1980s. She concentrates on clams -- the favorite dish of the walrus -- and other small animals living on the sea floor.

Scientists say global warming is particularly apparent in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, where research indicates floes of sea ice are increasingly melting away.

Polar bears, walruses and ribbon seals use sea ice as platforms for reproducing and feeding. If the ice disappears, doesn't remain long enough or becomes too thin, the animals' numbers could drop drastically as the parents don't adequately reproduce and abandoned youngsters starve.

Polar bears could potentially persist in much lower numbers on land, Ray said.

"The point is, these guys are totally dependent on the sea ice," he said of the seals and walruses. "That's it."

The Rays' research included a five-week trip to the Bering Sea last spring, supported by the National Science Foundation, aboard the 420-foot Coast Guard icebreaker Healy.

In the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia just south of the Arctic Circle, sea ice normally disappears in summer. But research has shown a "distinct trend" in ice loss from March through June, Ray said.

That's when the seals and walruses are giving birth and nursing their young, Ray said.

On his computer in his U.Va. office, Ray showed satellite images of the disappearing ice.

"It is melting earlier by about three weeks, and it is forming later by about three weeks," compared with the 1980s, Ray said.

Because polar bears and even walruses can live on land somewhat, Ray doesn't believe they will become extinct. Ribbon seals, however, never go on land. Ray called their extinction a "distinct possibility" if warming trends continue....

Walruses root around on the sea floor for clams, worms and other food. That rooting appears to release nutrients that feed tiny plants, which in turn feed tiny animals such as shrimplike krill, which are eaten by whales, seals, fish, and diving seabirds called auklets.

That chain reaction may contribute to making the Bering Sea, which to an outsider appears barren and hostile to life, a lush realm that rivals tropical rainforests in biological richness.

"It's probably one of the most productive places on Earth," said McCormick-Ray, also a U.Va. researcher.

The melting of sea ice could aid shipping, fishing, tourism and oil exploration. That would be good for commerce but probably disastrous, in terms of oil spills and pollution, for that little-understood ecosystem, the Rays said...