How Many Seals Were There? The Global Shelf Loss during the Last Glacial Maximum and Its Effect on the Size and Distribution of Grey Seal Populations
Predicting how marine mammal populations respond to habitat changes will be essential for developing conservation management strategies in the 21st century. Responses to previous environmental change may be informative in the development of predictive models. Here we describe the likely effects of t...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:3530534 2023-05-15T17:35:55+02:00 How Many Seals Were There? The Global Shelf Loss during the Last Glacial Maximum and Its Effect on the Size and Distribution of Grey Seal Populations Boehme, Lars Thompson, Dave Fedak, Mike Bowen, Don Hammill, Mike O. Stenson, Garry B. 2012-12-26 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3530534 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23300843 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0053000 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3530534 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23300843 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0053000 This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2012 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0053000 2013-09-04T17:38:12Z Predicting how marine mammal populations respond to habitat changes will be essential for developing conservation management strategies in the 21st century. Responses to previous environmental change may be informative in the development of predictive models. Here we describe the likely effects of the last ice age on grey seal population size and distribution. We use satellite telemetry data to define grey seal foraging habitat in terms of the temperature and depth ranges exploited by the contemporary populations. We estimate the available extent of such habitat in the North Atlantic at present (between 1.42·106 km2 and 2.07·106 km2) and at the last glacial maximum (between 4.74·104 km2 and 2.11·105 km2); taking account of glacial and seasonal sea-ice coverage, estimated reductions of sea-level (123 m) and sea surface temperature hind-casts. Most of the extensive continental shelf waters (North Sea, Baltic Sea and Scotian Shelf), currently supporting >95% of grey seals, were unavailable during the last glacial maximum. A combination of lower sea-level and extensive ice-sheets, massively increased seasonal sea-ice coverage and southerly extent of cold water would have pushed grey seals into areas with no significant shelf waters. The habitat during the last glacial maximum might have been as small as 3% of today's extent and grey seal populations may have fallen to similarly low numbers. An alternative scenario involving a major change to a pelagic or bathy-pelagic foraging niche cannot be discounted. However, hooded seals currently dominate that niche and may have excluded grey seals from such habitat. If as seems likely, the grey seal population fell to very low levels it would have remained low for several thousand years before expanding into current habitats over the past 12,000 years or so. Text North Atlantic Sea ice PubMed Central (PMC) PLoS ONE 7 12 e53000 |
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Research Article Boehme, Lars Thompson, Dave Fedak, Mike Bowen, Don Hammill, Mike O. Stenson, Garry B. How Many Seals Were There? The Global Shelf Loss during the Last Glacial Maximum and Its Effect on the Size and Distribution of Grey Seal Populations |
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Research Article |
description |
Predicting how marine mammal populations respond to habitat changes will be essential for developing conservation management strategies in the 21st century. Responses to previous environmental change may be informative in the development of predictive models. Here we describe the likely effects of the last ice age on grey seal population size and distribution. We use satellite telemetry data to define grey seal foraging habitat in terms of the temperature and depth ranges exploited by the contemporary populations. We estimate the available extent of such habitat in the North Atlantic at present (between 1.42·106 km2 and 2.07·106 km2) and at the last glacial maximum (between 4.74·104 km2 and 2.11·105 km2); taking account of glacial and seasonal sea-ice coverage, estimated reductions of sea-level (123 m) and sea surface temperature hind-casts. Most of the extensive continental shelf waters (North Sea, Baltic Sea and Scotian Shelf), currently supporting >95% of grey seals, were unavailable during the last glacial maximum. A combination of lower sea-level and extensive ice-sheets, massively increased seasonal sea-ice coverage and southerly extent of cold water would have pushed grey seals into areas with no significant shelf waters. The habitat during the last glacial maximum might have been as small as 3% of today's extent and grey seal populations may have fallen to similarly low numbers. An alternative scenario involving a major change to a pelagic or bathy-pelagic foraging niche cannot be discounted. However, hooded seals currently dominate that niche and may have excluded grey seals from such habitat. If as seems likely, the grey seal population fell to very low levels it would have remained low for several thousand years before expanding into current habitats over the past 12,000 years or so. |
format |
Text |
author |
Boehme, Lars Thompson, Dave Fedak, Mike Bowen, Don Hammill, Mike O. Stenson, Garry B. |
author_facet |
Boehme, Lars Thompson, Dave Fedak, Mike Bowen, Don Hammill, Mike O. Stenson, Garry B. |
author_sort |
Boehme, Lars |
title |
How Many Seals Were There? The Global Shelf Loss during the Last Glacial Maximum and Its Effect on the Size and Distribution of Grey Seal Populations |
title_short |
How Many Seals Were There? The Global Shelf Loss during the Last Glacial Maximum and Its Effect on the Size and Distribution of Grey Seal Populations |
title_full |
How Many Seals Were There? The Global Shelf Loss during the Last Glacial Maximum and Its Effect on the Size and Distribution of Grey Seal Populations |
title_fullStr |
How Many Seals Were There? The Global Shelf Loss during the Last Glacial Maximum and Its Effect on the Size and Distribution of Grey Seal Populations |
title_full_unstemmed |
How Many Seals Were There? The Global Shelf Loss during the Last Glacial Maximum and Its Effect on the Size and Distribution of Grey Seal Populations |
title_sort |
how many seals were there? the global shelf loss during the last glacial maximum and its effect on the size and distribution of grey seal populations |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2012 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3530534 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23300843 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0053000 |
genre |
North Atlantic Sea ice |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic Sea ice |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3530534 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23300843 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0053000 |
op_rights |
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0053000 |
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7 |
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12 |
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e53000 |
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1766135223660052480 |