They're cute, cuddly, and can remind us that there's still some semblance of innocence left in the world, but baby seals are facing a new challenge that has nothing to do with clubbing that could adversely affect future seal populations.
According to a Duke University study published in the journal PLOS One, baby harp seals along the eastern Canadian coast face a higher rate of stranding than adult seals due to shrinking ice cover.
"Stranding rates for the region's adult seals have generally not gone up as sea ice cover has declined; it's the young-of-the-year animals who are stranding (those less than one year old)," said one of the authors on the study, David Johnston from Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.
"And it's not just the weakest pups -- those with low genetic diversity and presumably lower ability to adapt to environmental changes — that are stranding," he said. "It appears genetic fitness has little effect on this."
In other words, the seals are facing a new threat in town, and it's Mother Nature's rising temperatures, a problem that scientists are still grappling with. The scientists looked at images of winter ice from 1992 to 2010 and compared that with genetic samples of stranded seals to see whether there was biological or meteorological correlation. They found that stranding for young harp seals rose when ice cover declined, whereas there was no significant change in the stranding rates for adult seals.
"Our findings demonstrate that sea ice cover and demographic factors have a greater influence on harp seal stranding rates than genetic diversity," said Brianne Soulen, another one of the authors on the study.
The researchers concluded their study abstract by saying, "these findings should be considered in the development of future management plans for the Arctic that incorporate climate variability."
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