New Scientist: The new Arctic king – Alpha Predator Orca?
In New Scientist its former editor in chief, Alun Anderson, essays on the past and future Arctic with an expert’s eye. He starts with only a thin faint knell of foreboding, in a reminiscence of a polar bear he met as a postdoc aboard a research vessel years ago, he works through well-observed if somewhat standard signs of change and how they will work out; writing like the pro he is he works the reader into sharing his vision of a world coming to evermore abundant life – yet also a drum-pounding scene of death.
The punch in the face is just a short section, a surmise really, that makes sense (and while this is primarily essay, he does cite an authority to give his speculation some heft). As the climate changes, so will the wildlife. The new creatures up there will be, The Tracker appreciates fully only after reading this, familiar ones to us. Salmon and haddock – and killer whales with bold dorsal fins slicing through the nigh-iceless main. Polar bears, walruses, beluga, narwhal? Fade, fade, fade. One can extend his musings. Adios ringed seals on the floes, ditto for harp seals that no Greenpeace campaign may save from the clubbing of the new maritime regime. Fin whales and blues may find a new place to prosper. Gray’s will frequent the whole Arctic shelf. But what of the bowhead? Sigh.
Be thankful to have lived when the old Arctic could still be glimpsed – if you can put up with the collective guilt.
Pic: Ocas off Antarctica, photo by Jeanne Cato, NSF ; source;
- Charlie Petit
