Our climate report highlights dramatic impacts on whales and dolphins - Whale and Dolphin Conservation
A new WDC report highlights the dramatic effect on whales and dolphins from climate change, including slowly boiling seas, shortage of prey and devastating mass death events.
The effects are also reducing the role these majestic ocean beings can play in helping to fight climate breakdown and are threatening multiple species with imminent extinction.
Whales in Hot Water, also looks at other threats to whale and dolphin populations from climate change, such as rapidly changing ocean environments causing species to turn on each other, toxins associated with algae blooms linked to climate change now regularly found in dead whales and dolphins, changes in behaviour that make them more vulnerable to being hit by passing ships, and weakening immune systems that make them more susceptible to disease.
For example, El Niño weather events, which are increasing in severity with climate change, are causing bottlenose dolphin populations to moved northward towards California, bringing them into areas of resident Californian harbour porpoises. Over the last 20 years, bottlenose dolphins have been increasing attacking, often fatally, their smaller cousins.
As the ocean warms and whales and dolphins are pushed to their limits, and moving to new areas, it creates an elevated risk of disease outbreak due to the increased stress causing lower immunity. 61% of disease outbreaks in whales and dolphins were recorded during times of increased sea surface temperature, which are projected to be longer and more frequent as climate change worsens.
Posted On: 08/12/2023
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