MASS WALRUS HAULOUTS ARE NOT NEW, NOVEL OR RELATED TO WEATHER OR CLIMATE

THE LEFT AND THE MASS MEDIA THEY DOMINATE ARE SPREADING MORE CLIMATE ALARMISM LIES - NOW WITH WALRUSES INSTEAD OF POLAR BEARS:

(CNN) -- Arctic ice is dwindling, the waters of the North Pacific Ocean are the warmest on record and tens of thousands of walruses have taken notice, "hauling out" on an Alaskan beach in numbers never seen before.

REALLY????? NEVER EVER SEEN BEFORE???? MORE:

Photos taken by scientists working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show more than 35,000 walruses gathered, or hauled out, on a beach near the village of Point Lay, on the Chukchi Sea in northwest Alaska on Saturday. A mass hangout for walruses U.N. tackles climate change Obama: No nation immune to climate changeThe walruses are forced onto land when sea ice, which they use to rest between dives for food, disappears, according to NOAA. ..."The massive concentration of walruses onshore -- when they should be scattered broadly in ice-covered waters -- is just one example of the impacts of climate change on the distribution of marine species in the Arctic," Margaret Williams, the World Wildlife Fund's managing director of the Arctic program, said in a statement.

IT'S PURE BULLSHIT.

Mass haulouts of Pacific walrus and stampede deaths are not new, not due to low ice cover

Large haulouts of walruses — such as the one making news at Point Lay, Alaska on the Chukchi Sea (and which happened before back in 2009) — are not a new phenomenon for this region over the last 45 years and thus cannot be due to low sea ice levels. Nor are deaths by stampede within these herds (composed primarily of females and their young) unusual, as a brief search of the literature reveals.

The attempts by WWF and others to link this event to global warming is self-serving nonsense that has nothing to do with science.

This may have been “one of the biggest onshore gatherings of the animals documented in Northwest Alaska“ that has been photographed but it is not the only time this has happened. 

At least two documented incidents like this have occurred in the recent past: one in 1978, on St. Lawrence Island and the associated Punuk Islands and the other in 1972, on Wrangell Island (Fay and Kelly 1980, excerpts below). 

These events included mass mortality associated with very large herds. ...
... Walrus numbers are up considerably from the 1960s, although they are notoriously difficult to count (Garlich-Miller et al. 2011). 

Population sizes may fluctuate for a number of reasons that have little to do with the low ice levels: note these very recent incidents of large walrus herds and associated mortality events (2009, 2011 and 2014) have not coincided with the lowest levels of summer sea ice in the area, which occurred in 2007 and 2012.

References
Fay, F.H. and B.P. Kelly. 1980. Mass natural mortality of walruses (Odobenus rosmarus) at St. Lawrence Island, Bering Sea, autumn 1978. Arctic 33:226-245.

ABSTRACT: In October-November 1978, several thousand living walruses came ashore in at least four localities on St. Lawrence Island where they had not been present before in this century. They hauled out also at two other sites which they have occupied annually but in much smaller numbers. At least 537 animals died on the haulout areas at that time, and approximately 400 other carcasses washed ashore from various sources. This was by far the greatest mortality of walruses ever recorded in an event of this kind. At least 15% of the carcasses on the haulouts were aborted fetuses, 24% were 5-6-month-old calves; the others were older animals ranging in age from 1 to 37 years old. About three-fourths of the latter on the haulouts were females; in the non-haulouts areas the sex ratio was about 1:1. Forty of the best preserved carcasses were examined by necropsy. The principal cause of death was identified as extreme torsion of the cervical spine, with resultant cerebrospinal hemorrhage, apparently due to traumatization by other walruses. Nearly all of the dead were extremely lean, having less than half as much subcutaneous fat as healthy animals examined in previous years. 

http://www.aina.ucalgary.ca/scripts/minisa.dll/144/proe/proarc/se+arctic,+v.+33,+no.++2,+June+1980,*?COMMANDSEARCH [open access] 

PDF: https://polarbearscience.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/walrus-st-lawrence-island-mortality-1978-fay-and-kelly-1980-marked.pdf 

Fay, F.H., L.L. Eberhardt, B.P. Kelly, J.J. Burns and L.T. Quakenbush. 1997. Status of the Pacific walrus population, 1950-1989. Marine Mammal Science 13:537-565.

IF THE CLIMATE ALARMISTS DIDN'T LIE, THEN THEY'D HAVE NOTHING TO SAY.

THIS INFORMATION IS EASY TO GET.

THE PEOPLE IN THE MASS MEDIA COULD ACCESS IT BUT IT DOESN'T FIT THEIR AGENDA SO THEY DON'T REVEAL IT.

DON'T BE DUPED BY THE ALARMISTS.