by Lyn Hayden
U.S. Geological Survey / U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
No, they’re not cute and fuzzy. They even stink. But there are people who care for these fat, seemingly lazy creatures. Chad Jay, Ph.D., marine biologist and researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage, Alaska, is one of those people.
During the spring and summer months, Jay plans and organizes trips to the Bering and Chukchi Seas to tag walruses. In mid-March, his crew of four entered the Bering Sea in an icebreaker, Healy, to do benthic sampling and to harpoon walruses for research.
Tagging allows scientists to track walruses’ movements along migratory routes through satellite signals, illuminating critical habitats, where they haul out, and where they feed. Jay’s crew started using a crossbow last year, shooting to implant satellite tags into each walrus’s six-inch layer of blubber. One-third of a walrus’s body weight is made up of blubber, which can help to protect from the pain of implantation. Jay found last year that it is easier to tag more walruses with this new method, although unfortunately, the tags don’t stay in place long.
This year, Jay’s team will tag walruses using harpoons as well as the old method, tranquilizing walruses and then hand fastening satellite tags to their tusks. With the tranquilizing method, they tag fewer walruses, but the tags stay in place longer. Combined, these two methods will deliver more information on more walruses for longer periods of time.
Why all the fuss over these huge, one-ton mammals? How does it affect us? That’s what Jay’s team, armed with crossbows, is aiming to find out.
Native Influence
Walruses are some of the largest and most powerful creatures that inhabit the Bering and Chukchi Seas. These huge pink mammals, referred to as pinnipeds, have four fin-like feet or flippers. The female walruses use these flippers to swim and to caress and guide their calves when on land.
Native Alaskans have more of a concern for the walrus’s welfare than most people, according to Tim Lebling, stranding coordinator for the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward. Their livelihood depends on these mammals and they have been very willing to share centuries of knowledge and experience with researchers.
For hundreds of years, Alaska Natives have depended on the walrus for sustenance. For centuries, tribes of Alaska Natives, the Yup’ik and Inupiat, have used every part of the walrus to survive in the frigid northern coastal areas around the North Pacific, Bering Sea, and Chukchi Sea. They eat walrus meat, feed it to their dogs, use the oil for fuel, and use the skins for boats, houses, and ropes. Ivory from walrus tusks has been used for centuries as harpoon tips for hunting, in art, and as sled runners.
Toxins
The marine ecosystem consists of several zones. The neritic zone overlaps the estuarine zone (where large rivers meet the open sea) and leads out to the shallow continental shelf waters. This area contains 90 percent of all sea life and is only 10 percent of our ocean. Phytoplankton or sea grass can readily grow here because it’s shallow enough for sunlight to penetrate, enabling photosynthesis. Shellfish, other bottom-feeding invertebrates, and zooplankton feed on this sea grass. Larger fish and mammals feed on these bottom feeders, and humans eat the larger fish and mammals, thus the marine food chain.
Out in the ocean or open sea, there are three zones: the euphotic zone, where light can still penetrate, the bathyal zone where larger animals such as whale and tuna swim, and the abyssal zone or the bottom.
The estuarine zone, the most important zone for all marine life, is the zone that receives the harshest blow when there are oil spills and other toxic wastes dumped into our oceans. All toxic wastes from land eventually find their way to the ocean, so there is no outlet for these toxins.
Walruses’ diets consist of meat, primarily invertebrates like snails, clams, crabs, sea urchins, and other shellfish that suffer when toxins enter the environment. They can eat over 100 pounds of food per day. Walruses’ eyes are small and not well developed, therefore they depend on tactile rather than visual perception. They have hundreds of bristle-like whiskers along with a sensitive upper lip that helps them sift through sand on the ocean floor to find food, rooting like pigs with their snouts. Walruses express a jet of water that helps wash away sand to expose shellfish. They suck soft parts of the mollusks from their shells and then eject the shells.
Crude oil is a collection of hundreds of substances, including low-boiling, lighter, and highly toxic aromatic hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons are the primary cause of massive kills of aquatic organisms, especially of bottom-dwelling shellfish, when there is an oil spill. Other oil hydrocarbons work their way into the fatty tissues of marine organisms and accumulate up the food chain to man. Alaska’s fisheries provide more than half of the seafood consumed in the U.S., according to the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB). Therefore, oil spills in this vicinity are of great concern.
According to an excerpt from an environmental impact statement by the Minerals Management Service (MMS), “Spills to open-water and broken-ice conditions result in lower recovery rates of 10 to 20 percent of the spilled oil.” This means that much of the spill remains in the environment.
Predators
A satellite radio tag protrudes from the back of a walrus. The new harpoon method of tagging is easier to affix, though unfortunately, the tag doesn’t stay in place as long. U.S. Geological Survey / U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
There are only a few known predators of the walrus, including polar bears, killer whales, and man.
In the late 1800s, whalers began harvesting walruses. They were wiping out walrus populations so quickly that many natives on both sides of the Bering Strait in Russia and Alaska starved to death. In the early 1900s, Norway, Canada, and the U.S. were fiercely hunting walruses for barter of furs. In addition, the Russians over harvested walruses for their hides, oil, and ivory to the point of near extinction, according to the Pacific Walrus Conservation Plan by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. Today, commercial walrus hunting is illegal, although subsistence hunting for Alaska Natives is legal.
But an end to hunting doesn’t mean that walruses are safe from human impacts. Recent research shows that warming ocean waters make walruses more susceptible to polar bears and killer whales. For the first time, researchers are observing females and their young hauling out on dry land along coastlines, which is unusual for them (but normal for males). Females and their calves need ice close to the continental shelf in water of depths less than 300 feet to feed. They don’t usually haul out on ice in deep water. Since the ice is melting along the coastline, there is no ice in the shallow water for the females and young to haul out. (In the late 1990s, Russian researchers started noticing this same phenomenon in North Chukotka, Jay said.)
The walrus’s normal habitat is open water near the edge of pack ice—sea ice that is formed when huge floes are crushed together, forming a mass. By using their tusks to pull themselves onto these floating islands, they can rest. “I have seen evidence for ice melt,” said Jay. “There is less sea ice for the walruses to haul out.”
With fewer ice floes, the distance between each one is greater. Calves are not able to swim these distances. With more calves hauling out on shore or forced to swim greater distances, they are at higher risk of being separated from their mothers and taken by polar bears or killer whales.
Other Hazards
Noise has a detrimental effect on walruses. Females and their young show the most sensitivity to noise from low-flying planes and motor boats that get too close to haulouts. Walruses use haulouts to give birth, nurse, rest, and to complete their molt and grow new hair. Adult walruses can stampede when they are alarmed, trampling calves to death. Noise also interferes with the walrus’s communication on land and in water.
It’s not only noise from planes, motor boats, and other machines that can affect walruses. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife’s Conservation Plan, “In air, walruses are especially responsive to odors.” Consequently, walruses flee their haulouts in response to the sight, sound, and especially odors of humans and machines.
The MMS’s environmental impact statement indicates that human activities would cause the kinds of disturbances that are known to affect walruses. The document states, “Industrial air emissions from support-vessel traffic; construction machinery; and production equipment, including compressors, generators, boilers, and various types of internal combustion engines, would affect air quality. Other effects on air quality would come from spilled oil, either due to evaporation or in situ burning of hydrocarbons, in the event of an oil spill.”
Walruses molt annually from June to October. At the southern edge of the Pacific range, walruses complete their molting sooner than walruses further north. This may be caused by a need for warmer skin temperatures to complete molting. Frequent entry into cold water from haulout sites caused by frequent disturbances may result in a prolonged molting period, thus increasing the metabolic rate in the affected walruses, according to Francis H. Fay in his study, The Ecology and Biology of the Pacific Walrus.
There are also natural hazards that cause mortality throughout Pacific walrus populations. Those include rock slides on terrestrial haulouts, strikes with tusks, trampling, umbilical hernia, acute pneumonitis, and a congenital limb deformity, according to Fay.
Organizational Support
Whose responsibility is it to protect our ecosystems? The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) of 1972 was designed to direct the conservation of all marine mammals, including walrus in the U.S. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has been responsible for the walrus since then and is assigned to uphold the laws of the act. Amendments to the act encourage co-management of walruses with Alaska Natives. The MMPA regulates harvest of the walrus by Alaska Natives only when walruses become scarce.
In the Northern Seas, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Alaska Science Center/USGS, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game are working closely with experts from Russia, Canada, Greenland, and Norway to gain knowledge about walruses’ and other marine mammals’ migratory routes and feeding patterns. Other partners are the Eskimo Walrus Commission and the Qayassik Walrus Commission. Cooperating in this manner speeds research along so the same studies will not be repeated and can be shared among experts.
“The Alaska Science Center/USGS is neither a regulatory agency nor a policy maker,” Jay said. “It is made up of researchers who provide science objectively so society can make policy decisions.”
The National Science Foundation (NSF), with an annual budget of more than $6 billion, provided the icebreaker research vessel. The North Pacific Research Board (NPRB) (http://bsierp.nprb.org), coupled with the NSF, is providing $50 million for research projects to investigate global warming; the research will continue through 2012. Armed with this money and their harpoons, Jay and his research team will implant satellite tags into the blubber of these thick-layered creatures.
A petition filed in February by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) triggered the push for more research. Shaye Wolf, Ph.D., ecologist and biologist for the CBD and lead author, filed the petition with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the Pacific walrus as a threatened or endangered species and to designate critical habitat to ensure its survival and recovery.
In February, the MMS sold leases for oil and gas exploration and drilling in the Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea, tentatively scheduled for 2010 and 2012, respectively. It is the MMS’s responsibility to gather information to prove that oil and gas exploration and drilling can be done safely without harm to critical habitats in these marine ecosystems. Recently, MMS initiated an environmental impact statement to evaluate the potential impacts of these activities.
With the walrus’s critical habitat already being threatened by global warming, the added blow of disturbance to the its feeding grounds, calving areas, and resting places by oil and gas exploration and drilling could push walruses to the brink of extinction. The CBD still has a chance to make a difference in Alaska, according to Wolf.
The focal point of Jay’s research in March was global warming and its effect on walruses. There were many other research groups that traveled to the area at that time. Included were 35 to 40 science researchers, media crews (including filming by the BBC), and researchers from U.S. universities. A trip Jay took in May included research focused on walruses’ response to oil and gas drilling with additional research on global warming.
The information gleaned from tagging efforts will be provided to regulatory agencies and Alaska Native groups.
Rescue at the Alaska SeaLife Center
The Alaska SeaLife Center has a rehabilitation center and is the only responding rescue program for stranded mammals and birds in all of Alaska, says Tim Lebling. They work closely with communities rescuing injured mammals and birds. In the past, Alaska Natives would leave stranded animals to die or they would harvest them. Now, they’re getting involved with the rehabilitation center and contacting Lebling when they find a sick or stranded animal.
The rehabilitation center gets about one stranded walrus calf per year. The most recent calf they had was a male named Chukchi, a 600- to 700-pound yearling who was separated from his mother last year. Calves nurse for approximately two years and depend on constant touch from their mothers, says Lebling. Chukchi was found hanging around near Red Dog Mine by miners who worked there. Apparently looking for some type of contact, he climbed onto a boat, getting tangled in chains and nets. Lebling’s team was called in and, unable to bring in a feisty walrus calf, they had to wait until Chukchi weakened.
After the rescue, it took Lebling five days and nights of constant attention to gain Chukchi’s trust. After a week, Lebling and Chukchi formed a bond and Lebling was finally able to give Chukchi a bottle and solid food. Chukchi gradually regained his strength and, unable to be released back into the wild, Lebling found a new home for him at Sea World San Diego, California.
Before Chukchi left, the rescuers found a lump on his side on his rib cage. Sadly, after he was shipped to Sea World, veterinarians did a biopsy and found the lump to be cancerous. They operated but the cancer had spread throughout his ribs, and Chukchi had to be euthanized. It was a huge blow for the Alaskan communities involved with Chukchi’s rescue, from the researchers to the miners from the Red Dog Mine, said Lebling.
The SeaLife Center has had many success stories, though, including Nereus, a young, stranded walrus that was rehabilitated and has been at the Indianapolis Zoo for five years. Lebling believes they will see more stranded calves who have been separated from their mothers because of melting ice floes.
Protection
It takes all different kinds of people with all types of backgrounds to protect our ecosystems. Teachers, researchers, scientists, parents, explorers, and interpreters are all stewards or managers of our Earth’s household. Man is our Earth’s caretaker, a person hired to take care of something for an owner who is not always in residence. We all need to focus on this same goal for future generations. With that said, where do we start? Sometimes it all seems too overwhelming.
Thoughts cause a response. When acted on, they can make a difference. It’s like an ant moving a rubber tree plant, inch by inch. If you can’t do anything immediately, just talk to other people, like your friends and family. Let them know where you stand; sometimes just passing information is enough.
Exploring, researching, and learning are avenues to information that assist interpreters and teachers in elucidating the environment for others. Interpreters and teachers hope for a chain reaction, a change in viewpoint from passive to active, resulting in a change in human behavior. After all, our legacy is what we pass down to our children.
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Lyn Hayden earned her bachelors degree from the College of Natural Resources at Utah State University with a major in outdoor recreation with a specialization in interpretation. She has worked for years with the U.S. Forest Service, most recently as an interpreter on Mt. Evans, Colorado. She has been a correspondent for Park County’s local newspaper, The Flume.
ImageLake Superior is 350 miles long with a breadth of 160 miles. It is large enough in surface area and volume to contain all the other Great Lakes plus three more the size of Lake Erie. On Lake Superior’s coast, the Shipwreck Museum consists of eight historic structures at the site of the Whitefish Point Light Station, the oldest working light station on Lake Superior.
National Park Service Strives for Ocean Education
by Lynne Murdock
Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska is one of the oldest coastal national parks in the National Park System. National Park Service.
The year 2016 is significant to the National Park System not only because it marks a century since Woodrow Wilson signed the “Organic Act” establishing the National Park Service (NPS), but also because it commemorates the addition of the first ocean park to America’s crown jewels. In 1916, Acadia National Park joined the other 35 parks and monuments of the National Park System as Sieur de Mont National Monument. Today the 391-unit National Park System has grown to include 6,800 miles of coast across 75 parks and 26 states with over 75 million visits per year, generating $2.5 billion in economic benefits for surrounding communities.
President Bush’s U.S. Ocean Action Plan called on the National Park Service (NPS) to develop a plan to conserve ocean and coastal resources, and on December 1, 2006, NPS Director Mary Bomar announced the release of the Ocean Park Stewardship Action Plan at the 50th anniversary of Virgin Islands National Park.
The Ocean Park Stewardship Action Plan establishes goals and priorities to restore and maintain the tremendous biological and recreational values of ocean and coastal resources across the National Park System in collaboration with state and federal agencies and park stakeholders.
Consistent with the national level plan, the Northeast, Southeast, Alaska, and Pacific West regions have developed strategic plans that identify goals and action items with four major topics:
• Establish a seamless network of ocean parks, sanctuaries, refuges and reserves
• Discover, map, and protect ocean parks
• Engage visitors and the public in ocean park stewardship
• Increase technical capacity for ocean exploration and stewardship
Park Rangers provide educational programs on cruise ships. National Park Service.
Examples of successful joint stewardship programs can serve as models for managing marine resources that attract academic interest. At Point Reyes National Seashore, the Pacific Coast Research Learning Center hosts collaborative projects such as the Marine All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory (ATBI), in which students from Tomales Bay High School worked with park researchers and local university staff to identify and remove an invasive tunicate from Tomales Bay that had the potential to greatly impact freshwater oysters. (For recent information on this partnership visit www.tomalesbaylife.org /publications.htm.)
“Channel Islands Live!” is a joint classroom-based program between Channel Islands National Park and Ventura Department of Education. A popular element of the program is a live transmission from the kelp forest into the classroom that allows students to interact with a National Park Service ranger as the ranger interprets the natural history of the kelp forest from under water. The technical support to make this project happen is complex and requires ingenuity and determination to install and maintain the necessary hardware in remote locations. Interestingly, installing the communications network on remote islands is highly rewarding for technical support staff when they experience firsthand how much their hardware and expertise is relied upon to deliver compelling educational experiences. (To learn more about this partnership visit http://chil.vcoe.org.)
In conjunction with park partners and the Ocean Alaska Science and Learning Center, Kenai Fjords National Park hosted the National Ocean Sciences Bowl in Seward, Alaska, April 25-27, 2008. This exciting educational event allowed high school students from diverse geographic locations and backgrounds to match their knowledge of ocean science with their peers in regional and national competitions. (Visit www.oceanalaska.org for information about Kenai Fjords and visit www.nosb.org for information about this event.)
Communicating about critical natural resource issues requires targeted messages for specific park user groups. Given the right information and knowledge, recreational users such as boaters are eager and better equipped to protect the resources they enjoy. The NPS Marine Recreational Stewardship Program assists parks with educational partnerships, increased use of mooring buoys, signage, maps, and outreach to the recreational community. The Great Annual Fish Count (GAFC) is founded on the same principle as the Christmas Bird Count, but occurs underwater with recreational scuba divers recording sightings and abundance of fish species throughout the year. Channel Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Biscayne National Parks participate in the GAFC with the Reef Environmental Education Foundation. For more information, visit www.reef.org/programs/volunteersurvey.
Data synthesis makes current research outcomes useable and relevant to park visitors. One method to help parks accomplish this is the Research Learning Center network. Currently, there are 17 National Park Service Research Learning Centers designed to facilitate needed research in parks while sharing the results in a compelling manner to a range of audiences. The Schoodic Research and Education Center (SERC) located on the Schoodic Peninsula within Acadia National Park is a former navy base that has been modified and converted to an NPS Research Learning Center. SERC involves the public in an inventory of insects known as “bio-blitz” in many ways. (For more about Acadia and their Research Learning Center visit www.nps.gov/acad/serc.htm.)
“To engage visitors and the public on ocean park stewardship” and “best practices” are two phrases that were consistently referenced as park staff from Cape Cod, Acadia, Gateway, Gulf Islands, Cape Hatteras, Glacier Bay, Channel Islands, and Washington, D.C., gathered in Quincy, Massachusetts March 24–25, 2008, for an “Ocean Park Education” seminar.
Topics ranged from marine protected areas to future online Web Ranger modules on sea grasses and shipwrecks. During a field trip to Boston Harbor Islands, participants learned about the cleanup of Boston Harbor and partnerships that make this park area unique. Students charting a course to Boston Harbor Islands were featured on the cover of the four conference manuals of the 56th National Conference on Science Education held in Boston, Massachusetts, March 27-30, 2008.
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For more information on the ocean and coastal parks, visit www.nps.gov/pub_aff/oceans/conserve.htm.
Lynne Murdock is the interpretive liaison for the associate director of Natural Resources, Science, and Stewardship (NRSS) for the National Park Service.