Huge walrus haul out in Alaska result of retreating sea ice say scientists

WATCH ABOVE: Retreating Arctic sea ice has forced thousands of Alaskan walrus onto land. Karen Wristen from the Living Oceans Society explains more about the massive gathering to Jill Krop on Unfiltered on BC1.

VANCOUVER – A walrus haul out has been spotted in northwest Alaska with 35,000 of the animals overwhelming the beaches.

Karen Wristen, the executive director of the Living Oceans Society, said this is a phenomenon that has been going on for a few years and was first spotted in 2006 in Russia.

“What’s happening is the sea ice has retreated into such high latitude waters where the ocean is really deep, that the walrus can’t live on the ice and forage any longer,” said Wristen. “So they’re coming ashore to try to get closer to the water that actually feeds them.”

The photos of the walruses were taken as part of an annual survey by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It’s certainly true that the sea ice in this area has retreated far faster than was ever predicted by the early climate change models,” said Wristen. “In 2007 we had what we thought was a real wake-up call when it hit a 30-year low, and 30 years is as long as we’ve been monitoring the sea ice extent in the arctic.”

“But it only took five years for that record to be broken, in 2012 it was lower still. So while it goes up and down annually the rate of retreat is really alarming.”

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Wristen said this winter the situation will improve for the walrus but over the long-term the outlook does not look good.

“There’s two ways that it’s going to impact them,” she said. “First of all when the actual stampede happens, you’ve got 35,000 of these animals, some of them weigh as much as two metric tonnes coming ashore and kind of frantic to get there. What happens is, a lot of the smaller animals get trampled so the young ones will die and every time this kind of haul out in these numbers has happened anywhere from about 100 to I think 500 animals have been estimated to have been killed, directly, in the haul out.”

“But the longer term impact is, they’re going to have to spend a lot more energy than they normally do, trying to forage for food.”