Ribbon Seal Loses Icy Habitat

Ribbon Seal Loses Icy Habitat

January 2008  - The rare ribbon seal 
may be one of the first species to lose its habitat to global warming, 
says the Center for Biological Diversity. The ribbon seal is dependent on 
Arctic sea ice for survival - but that sea ice is shrinking fast. 
The group has filed a scientific petition with the National Marine 
Fisheries Service to protect the ribbon seal under the federal Endangered 
Species Act due to decline of its habitat in a warming climate. 
"The Arctic is in crisis state from global warming," said Shaye Wolf, a 
biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity and lead author of the 
petition. 
"An entire ecosystem is rapidly melting away and the ribbon seal is poised 
to become the first victim of our failure to address global warming," he 
said. 

The ribbon seal is the most decoratively patterned of all seals. While the 
pups are pure white, the adults have black fur wrapped in white circles. 
"Why does the ribbon seal have its stripes? Probably to make it less 
visible to underwater predators," explains ribbon seal biologist Carleton 
Ray from the University of Virginia. 
"But this beautiful, charismatic species may soon become totally invisible 
should its spring reproductive habitat of sea ice continue to diminish, as 
climate models predict," he said. 
During the late winter through early summer, ribbon seals rely on the edge 
of the sea ice in the Bering and Okhotsk Seas off Alaska and Russia as 
safe habitat for giving birth and as a nursery for their pups. 
But Wolf says that this winter the sea-ice habitat is rapidly 
disappearing. "If current ice-loss trends due to global warming continue, 
the ribbon seal faces likely extinction by the end of the century," he 
says. 
The ribbon seal's winter sea ice habitat is projected to decline 40 
percent by mid-century under recent greenhouse gas emissions trends, Wolf 
says. 
He says any remaining sea ice will be much thinner and unlikely to last 
long enough for the ribbon seals to finish rearing their pups, leading to 
widespread pup mortality. 
In addition to loss of its sea-ice habitat from global warming, the ribbon 
seal faces threats from increased oil and gas development in its habitat 
and the proliferation of shipping routes in the increasingly ice-free 
Arctic. 

Ribbon seals are still managing to find thick enough ice to support their 
activities. G. Carleton Ray of the University of Virginia Department of 
Environmental Sciences travelled to the Bering Sea in May 2007 and 
encountered them. 
"In Russian waters is pack ice with leads, where strong, cold winds from 
Siberia create thick ice with parallel leads and where, last year, we 
found little-known, strikingly beautiful ribbon seals," wrote Ray. 
In Wolf's view there is still reason to hope for their survival. 
"With rapid action to reduce carbon dioxide, methane and black carbon 
emissions, combined with a moratorium on new oil and gas development and 
shipping routes in the Arctic, we can still save the ribbon seal, the 
polar bear, and the Arctic ecosystem," he said. "But the window of 
opportunity to act is closing rapidly." 
He points out that warming in the Arctic now is occurring at a pace so 
rapid that is exceeding the predictions of the most advanced climate 
models. 
"Summer sea-ice extent in 2007 plummeted to a record minimum which most 
climate models forecast would not be reached until 2050," Wolf observed. 
"Winter sea ice declined to a minimum in 2007 that most climate models 
forecast would not be reached until 2070." 

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