International Seal Day, focusing on seals and climate change

Today (March 1) is the International Seal day, focusing on seals and on the effects of climate change on seals. Many people and organizations call on mankind to jointly protect seals. A Dutch woman named Nihat, through the media, has appealed to people to protect the seal's living environment, and her efforts have not only changed the fate of local seals, but also greatly strengthened people's awareness of environmental protection.

In recent years, climate change has had a serious impact on the species of seals that depend on ice. Arctic warming, winter Dongmochunchu ice thinning, female seals difficult to produce, some less than 12 days of small seals, prematurely fell into the ice and died. The warming of the Earth is a disaster for the seals.
Climate change has led to mass extinction of Antarctic elephant seals
Antarctic elephant seals have acquired a new habitat in a climate change process about 8,000 years ago, and the elephant seals in this large habitat were almost completely extinct when the climate changed again about 1000 years ago, according to a study.
An international team led by the school's researchers has used genetic technology to analyze some of the elephant seals found along the Victoria coast of Antarctica, the University of Durham said in a press release. It was found that the DNA in the sample was highly diverse, indicating that the region was once a fairly large elephant seal habitat.
But now the region does not live like a seal, and the nearest elephant seal habitat is 2500 kilometers away.
Further analysis shows that this is because a climate change about 8,000 years ago caused the Antarctic ice sheet to shrink to form this habitat. As the environment is good and food is plentiful, elephant seals migrate here quickly and form a large population. But, about 1000 years ago, the climate changed again and the ice sheet "returned", with the exception of a handful of elephant seals returning to their original homes, most elephant seals in the region were exterminated as the environment changed. (Source: Cyts online)

Arctic sea ice melts seals into American "refugees"
the Greenland seals usually mate, reproduce, and migrate northward as temperatures rise in the spring, when they come to sea ice outside the east coast of Canada. But more and more seals are starting to come and stay on the east coast of the United States, heading south to Carolina, a far farther south than they should be.
Research shows that as the North Atlantic sea ice is shrinking, the number of seals stranded on the east coast of the United States is soaring, and most seals are either dead or in a very bad state of health.
The study is currently published in this month's academic journal "PLoS". Brianne Soulen, a biologist at the University of North Texas, said the decline in sea ice should be responsible for most of the seals ' retention. According to statistics, most of the stranded seals are young seals, mainly males, which accounts for about 62% of the total. Male seals are more likely to be stranded because they are more likely to travel alone than to forage at a distance.
White Greenland seals typically breed on sea ice, and females then feed their cubs and stay with them. The cubs then slowly live independently. As the area and number of sea ice decrease, the researchers speculate, the ice will become more and more crowded, so that many young seals are forced into the sea before they learn how to sail and prey in the sea, which leads to the loss of a sense of direction and the migration of fish from the sea to the south, Soulen explains. The threat of sea-ice reduction has led to the Alaska of two species of seals: ringed seals and iguanas have entered the endangered species list. (Source: China Weather Network)

Climate change causes Baltic seals to be ice-free
Striped seals living in the Baltic Sea nourish their offspring in ice caves. But there are fewer ice holes to be found, and global warming is causing the problem, and the polar bears who feed the seals will have no food to eat.
The spotted seal's habitat extends from the Arctic to the Baltic Sea. But according to the World Wide Fund for Nature's latest report, many parts of the Baltic Sea, especially between Finland and Sweden in the Gulf of Latvia and Riga Bay, and Finland's Oran Islands, almost all the ice caps have melted, which has threatened the survival of newborn seals.
Catherine Munster, the World Nature Foundation's Baltic biodiversity expert, said: "Striped seals typically breed in the middle of February, and in the first seven or eight weeks after the cub's birth, the seals stay in the ice holes on the pack to feed their cubs so they can get enough fat to survive in the cold water. ”
But she said: "The lack of freezing around the Oran Islands and the Gulf of Riga means that the winter-born seals are not protected from shelter so they are hard to survive." "There is no solid or enough ice to sustain the original
, the seal cubs have to swim in the icy waters without the body's vital fat layer protection, so that they are premature by hypothermia and malnutrition.
1700 of seals are estimated to live in the Oran and Riga bays, which means the melting of the ice caps threatens the survival of almost one-fourth species of seals in the Baltic Sea. There have been recent reports of a high death rate of striped seals in the Northern hemisphere this year for the second consecutive winter, due to the lack of sea ice. Munster that the massive death of seals in the Baltic Sea is both a result of climate change and a declaration of climate change in the region. (Source: daily)

Seals Little Common Sense
Seals are marine mammals, there are 18 species of global seals, 7 species in the arctic, 4 species in the Antarctic. But in numbers, Arctic seals are not as much as Antarctica. All the world seal body drink is spindle-shaped, suitable for swimming, the head is round, looks like a home dog. In the world ocean, there are many kinds of seals in existence, there are 13 genera 18 species. The largest number of Antarctic, followed by the Arctic Ocean, the North Atlantic, the North Pacific and other fields.
In order to adapt to the cold environment, seals accumulate thick fat in the body. These fats allow them to keep their body temperature at 36-37 degrees Celsius as humans do.
The origin of International Seal Day
As a result of overfished and sea water pollution, the number of seals is now declining rapidly. To protect this rare animal, the Rescue Seal Foundation decided in 1983 that it would be the international Seal Day of March 1 each year.