Researchers in Baja report that some grey whales arriving from their Arctic feeding zones are showing up at their breeding grounds noticeably skinny. By the time the breeding season ends they're heading back north quite emaciated with vertebra and bones poking out where there ought to be blubber.
The greys normally get fat and healthy in the krill and plankton-rich waters of the Bering Sea, or at least they once did.
"The basic problem," says Dr Megill, "is that there isn't enough for them to eat in the Arctic circle in the summertime, so they've been arriving hungry on the breeding grounds, and since there really isn't much for them to eat in Mexico, they've left the breeding grounds even hungrier, and now look emaciated as they make their way north."
Scientists suspect the melting polar ice cap has damaged the food supply in the Chirikov Basin where the grey whales feed.
"You could practically walk across the grey whales in the Chirikov Basin in the 1980s," said Sue Moore, a scientist who has conducted aerial surveys of the area. "They were stacked up to the horizon. In 2002, I went back and everything had changed."
It remains to be seen how the recent El Nino has affected the whales.
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