LONDON - Global warming is quickly snapping up another victim after reports suggested that large numbers of harbor porpoises having been starving to death due to climate change.
The report says that increasing temperature of water in the North Sea around Scotland is reducing the supplies of the mammals' preferred diet, the sand eels. Many experts have warned that with porpoises not switching to an alternate diet, they risk starvation.
The study, conducted by a team of scientists from Aberdeen University and the Scottish Agricultural College (SAC), said that while porpoises themselves do not mind warm water, sand eels are quickly dying off.
The researchers compared the stomach contents of stranded porpoises during the period from 1992 to 2001 and from porpoises stranded between 2000 to 2003. They found that the number of porpoises that had died of starvation had increased from 5 percent in the late 1990s to 33 percent during the spring of 2002 and 2003.
Says Colin MacLeod, a scientist at Aberdeen University and lead researcher of the study, "Harbour porpoises are already affected by humans, and this latest research shows that we have yet another thing to worry about when trying to conserve them. This was not an effect of climate change we expected for harbour porpoises."
He added that the study proved that no component of the ecosystem was independent o each other. "It also makes it very clear that to save the whales, you also need to save the fish, squid and other animals they rely on for food."
