Impacts of climate change on krill and other food resources of whales in the Southern Ocean

MARSCHOFF, ENRIQUE R.; GALLOTI, DIEGO; DONNINI GIOVANNA; ALESCIO, NADIA S.

Santo Domingo de Heredia, Costa Rica

Workshop; Workshop on climate change and adaptation options for cetaceans and other marine biodiversity of the eastern Pacific; 2009

Abstract: There is now unequivocal evidence that climate change is happening (IPCC, 2007). One of the irreversible changes that the International Panel on Climate Change has predicted is species loss and they estimate that 20-30% of the plant and animal species assessed so far are at an increased risk of extinction if global temperatures rise by 1.5-2.5oC. However, the precise implications of climate change for particular taxa are not clear and various initiatives are now underway to access likely impacts and identify the most sensitive species. The aim of this research is to evaluated the impact of climate change on the food resources of whales. The working hypothesis is that dispersion centers (Makarov et. Al., 1990, Marschoff, 1996) located at the Polar Front, East Wind Drift and coastal currents are responsible for the retention of euphausiid species, which differ in their temperature tolerances and hatching depths. These two characteristics seem to be enough to explain their varying ranges and is likely that changes in these characteristics due to the climate change will have a huge impact over the whales populations.