Scientists Tracked Arctic Animals' Movements Patterns for Three Decades- This is What They Found. For animals in the Arctic, life is a balancing act. Seasonal cues, such as warmer spring temperatures or cooler temperatures in the fall, tell animals when to migrate, when to mate, and when and where to find food. Predators and prey, birds and mammals alike follow this natural schedule, and an overall shift of just a few days or weeks could have unknown impacts on these animals and ecosystems. These changes in seasonal timing are already starting - although the shifts differ between species and populations - according to a new study published recently in Science that was funded in part by the NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE). The researchers analyzed data from the Arctic Animal Movement Archive (AAMA), a collection of data from more than 200 research studies tracking nearly a hundred species from 1991 to present, in combination with NASA temperature, rainfall, snowfall, and topographic data. They found that Arctic animals' movement patterns are shifting in different ways, which could disrupt entire ecosystems. SciTechDaily

 

The Hopeful Return of Polar Whales. The bleak history of whaling pushed many species to the brink of extinction, even in the remote waters of the north and south poles. Over 1.3 million whales were killed in just 70 years around Antarctica alone. The scale of this industrial harvest completely decimated many populations of large whales in the Southern Ocean. But nearly 40 years after commercial whaling ended, we're finally seeing signs that some of the most heavily-targeted species are recovering. In a recent study, scientists reported that blue whales, once prized by whalers for their gargantuan size, are increasing in number in the waters surrounding the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, with 41 new individuals catalogued over the past nine years. Maritime Executive