Ocean warming threatens southern right whale population recovery.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 34652948.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abh2823 and PMC identifier 8519561.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
Whales contribute to marine ecosystem functioning, and they may play a role in mitigating climate change and supporting the Antarctic krill (<i>Euphausia superba</i>) population, a keystone prey species that sustains the entire Southern Ocean (SO) ecosystem. By analyzing a five-decade (1971–2017) data series of individual southern right whales (SRWs; <i>Eubalaena australis</i>) photo-identified at Península Valdés, Argentina, we found a marked increase in whale mortality rates following El Niño events. By modeling how the population responds to changes in the frequency and intensity of El Niño events, we found that such events are likely to impede SRW population recovery and could even cause population decline. Such outcomes have the potential to disrupt food-web interactions in the SO, weakening that ecosystem’s contribution to the mitigation of climate change at a global scale.