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The Gulf of St. Lawrence has warmed and lost oxygen more rapidly than almost anywhere else in the Earth's oceanic waters due in part to climate change, raising the possibility that it could soon be unable to fully support marine life, according to a new study.
The Alaska Vitamin D Workgroup recently formulated Alaska-specific vitamin D supplement recommendations. It recommends clinicians in the 49th state consider prescribing double the nationally recommended amount for breastfed infants. Listen now
Mass die-offs and breeding failures, now ongoing for years, have marine biologists worried that this is a new normal caused by climate change.
A team of biologists is surveying a lake on Kodiak Island for crawfish, an invasive species in Alaska that has been observed in higher frequency over past several years.
Climate change may be enabling beavers to move deeper into the Arctic. And as they move, they magnify climate change’s effects.
When the European Space Agency (ESA) launched a satellite into orbit on Oct. 13, it did so despite opposition from Inuit leaders in Canada and Greenland over its potential to contaminate an important Arctic area.
In August 2017, Sun’aq Tribe of Kodiak was awarded funding by USFWS Tribal Wildlife Grant (TWG) Program. The two-year project, titled “Distribution, Movement and Diet of Invasive Crayfish Populations in Buskin River Watershed on Kodiak Island, Alaska” focuses on characterizing the distribution (snorkel/scuba diving surveys), movement (radio tagging) and diet (stable isotope analyses) of the Signal Crayfish population within Buskin Watershed.
An assistant professor at the University of Alaska–Fairbanks suspects that changes seen in the auklet population on Little Diomede may be related to changes in climate.
The whales seem to have died from starvation and washed up on shore from California to Alaska
According to numbers in the Food Security in Nunatsiavut survey, nearly 60 per cent of all households along Labrador's north coast struggle with access to food, and most worry about it running out before they have money to buy more.
Sixty years ago, around the time when Matthew Rexford's father's father was turning the ground to build his own ice cellar as a proud whaling captain, there were 12 of these such cellars in Kaktovik. Today there is only one left.
Wild salmon from the Pacific coast of North America may be infected with Japanese tapeworms, according to a study in a CDC-published journal.
The regionally endemic Galapagos Grouper, locally known as bacalao, is one of the most highly prized finfish species within the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR). Concerns of overfishing, coupled with a lack of fishing regulations aimed at this species raises concerns about the current population health. We assessed changes in population health over a 30-year period using three simple indicators: (1) percentage of fish below reproductive size (Lm); (2) percentage of fish within the optimum length interval (Lopt); and (3) percentage of mega-spawners in the catch. Over the assessed period, none of the indicators reached values associated with healthy populations, with all indicators declining over time. Furthermore, the most recent landings data show that the vast majority of the bacalao caught (95.7%,) were below Lm, the number of fish within the Lopt interval was extremely low (4.7%), and there were virtually no mega-spawners (0.2%). Bacalao fully recruit to the fishery 15 cm below the size at which 50% of the population matures. The Spawning Potential Ratio is currently 5% of potential unfished fecundity, strongly suggesting severe overfishing. Our results suggest the need for bacalao-specific management regulations that should include minimum (65 cm TL) and maximum (78 cm TL) landing sizes, slot limits (64–78 cm TL), as well as a closed season during spawning from October to January. It is recognized that these regulations are harsh and will certainly have negative impacts on the livelihoods of fishers in the short term, however, continued inaction will likely result in a collapse of this economically and culturally valuable species. Alternative sources of income should be developed in parallel with the establishment of fishing regulations to limit the socio-economic disruption to the fishing community during the transition to a more sustainable management regime.
Contagious cancers occur in clams and other bivalves, and some can even spread between different species of bivalves.
A new study from USGS, ANTHC, and the Local Environmental Observer (LEO) Network, provides a view statewide trends in wild berry harvests. The authors conclude that monitoring and experimental studies are needed to understand how climate change may affect the species of wild berries that are important to Alaskans. They also recommended that methods by which rural communities can increase their resilience to declining or more variable berry harvests be explored.
There's somewhat of a slow motion invasion of a fresh water crustacean happening in Buskin River and Buskin Lake. It has a hard shell, two claws and tastes great in pies.
Populations of marine wildlife have plummeted by a half on average over the past 40 years with some species suffering far greater declines as a result of habitat loss, overfishing, rising sea temperatures and worsening ocean acidity, a major report has found.
A recent study shows that polar bears' mercury levels are declining as melting ice drives them onshore. But is it all good news? Read on.
For decades, the crab piled up in fishing boats like gold coins hauled from a rich and fertile sea. But the very ocean that nursed these creatures may prove to be this industry’s undoing.Scientists fear ocean acidification will drive the collapse of Alaska's iconic crab fishery.
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