( Ocean warming has a negative impact on ...)Elephant seal pups suffer from ocean warming

Ocean warming has a negative impact on the condition of elephant seals, reveals a study published in the Open Access journal BMC Biology. High ocean temperatures observed from 1975 to the late 1990s are correlated with a 28% decrease in the weight of elephant seal pups. Elephant seals are shown to be sensitive to ocean temperature changes associated with both long-term 25-year cycles and short-term 3-4 year cycles such as those caused by El Niño.

Sea lions and fur seals that feed near their rookeries at the surface of the ocean are known to be very sensitive to water temperature changes, as an increase in water temperature usually causes their prey to migrate to cooler areas, depleting local food resources and resulting in pup starvation. Elephant seals, which feed in deep waters, were previously thought to be better buffered against ocean temperature changes than other sea mammals.

A study by Dr Burney Le Boeuf and Dr David Crocker from the University of California in Santa Cruz, shows that as waters get warmer the average weight of an elephant seal pup decreases. Weaning weights are a direct indicator of food availability to mother seals during their pregnancy. Because their prey has migrated to colder waters, female seals have to swim further and spend more time searching for food. As a result, they gain less body mass while pregnant and have fewer reserves to draw on during nursing. Nursing pups get all nourishment from their mothers; changes in ocean temperature therefore directly affect the weight, and the survival rate, of the pups.

To assess the impact of temperature changes on food availability to elephant seals, Le Boeuf and Crocker monitored the weight of 2750 elephant seal pups over a period of 29 years, from 1975 to 2004, during which the ocean temperature generally increased before starting to cool again in 2000. The pups, from a rookery located in central California, were weighed within 10 days of weaning. Le Boeuf and Crocker's
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Source:Biomed Central

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