CAFF Assessment Series No. 10 October 2013 Life Linked to Ice A guide to sea-ice-associated biodiversity in this time of rapid change d s a n s l I n n e a a c t i O u Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky e i c l i f A a c P Bering Sea Sea of t h Kamchatka Okhotsk r o Amur N St. Lawrence r e Island Magadan Gulf of v Anchorage i Bering Anadyr Alaska R Strait Okhotsk n Chukchi Pen. UNITED STATES o k (Chukotka) u Juneau ALASKA Y a River Alda Whitehorse Fairbanks Chukchi Kolym n Sea Point Lay Yakutsk YUKON Barrow Wrangel L e Island n Prudhoe Bay a Calgary Kaktovik East Verkhoyansk R ackenzie River Inuvik iv M Siberian er Beaufort Edmonton NORTHWEST TERRITORIES Sea r Tuktoyaktuk Sea ve Great Bear Ri New Tiksi a Great Slave Lake en Lake Canada Siberian L Yellowknife Islands C a Basin Banks n a Island d Laptev i a Arctic Ocean Sea Victoria n CANADA e Island A g RUSSIA r i d c R Cambridge Bay t e v i g so T NUNAVUT Queen c id o a y R n m A a Elizabeth r o i Churchill h e r c p Makarov Severnaya l m g P Arviat h Zemlya e Islands i A Basin o d n p L i Resolute R i Rankin Inlet e n la l s g e u k l Norilsk Ellesmere o a Amundsen ak Hudson Island G Basin nisey R. Bay Coral Harbour Igloolik Alert Ye Pond Inlet Nares Strait Foxe Franz N Basin d Josef n Qaanaaq Nansen o la Land v Is Baffin Basin a y Salluit n fi Bay a f Ba Z Kara Clyde River e QUÉBEC Iqaluit SVALBARD m Sea Salekhard O l Pangnirtung NORWAY y b a R. Longyearbyen Vorkuta Ilulissat Fram Strait Barents Naryan-Mar Davis Sisimiut GREENLAND Sea LABRADOR Strait DENMARK Nuuk Greenland K Sea a Syktyvkar m Murmansk a Jan Ammassalik Tromsø Kola Mayen a R. Peninsula White N. Dvin Island Norwegian Sea Arkhangelsk Labrador Denmark Strait Sea F Sea E IN Lake C L L ICELAND A R C T I C C I R A Onega N Lake Reykjavik Y N D A E Ladoga D Baltic W Helsinki St. Petersburg FAROE E Sea North Atlantic Torshavn R ISLANDS W Talinn Moscow O Ocean DENMARK S N Oslo Stockholm Figure 1. Map of the Arctic marine environment including features and places referred to in this report Based on a map designed by Hugo Ahlenius, UNEP/GRID-Arendal Acknowledgements CAFF Designated Agencies: • Directorate for Nature Management, Trondheim, Norway • Environment Canada, Ottawa, Canada • Faroese Museum of Natural History, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands (Kingdom of Denmark) • Finnish Ministry of the Environment, Helsinki, Finland • Icelandic Institute of Natural History, Reykjavik, Iceland • Ministry of Housing, Nature and the Environment, Government of Greenland • Russian Federation Ministry of Natural Resources, Moscow, Russia • Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Stockholm, Sweden • United States Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, Anchorage, Alaska CAFF Permanent Participant Organizations: • Aleut International Association (AIA) • Arctic Athabaskan Council (AAC) • Gwich’in Council International (GCI) • Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) • Russian Indigenous Peoples of the North (RAIPON) • Saami Council This publication should be cited as: Eamer, J., Donaldson, G.M., Gaston, A.J., Kosobokova, K.N., Lárusson, K.F., Melnikov, I.A., Reist, J.D., Richardson, E., Staples, L., von Quillfeldt, C.H. 2013. Life Linked to Ice: A guide to sea-ice-associated biodiversity in this time of rapid change. CAFF Assessment Series No. 10. Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna, Iceland. ISBN: 978-9935-431-25-7. Front cover photo: Walrus emerging through sea ice, Greenland. Photo: Uri Golman Back cover photo: Polar bears. Photo: Valerie Ucumari For more information please contact: CAFF International Secretariat Borgir, Nordurslod 600 Akureyri, Iceland Phone: +354 462-3350 Email: [email protected] Internet: www.caff.is CAFF Designated Area 4 Steering committee Garry Donaldson, Environment Canada (chair); Tom Barry, CAFF Secretariat; Gilbert Castellanos, US Fish and Wildlife Service; Maria Gavrilo, Arctic Antarctic Institute, St. Petersburg; Trish Hayes, Environment Canada; Janet Hohn, US Fish and Wildlife Service Authors Joan Eamer, Eamer Science Services; Garry Donaldson, Environment Canada; Tony Gaston, Environment Canada; Ksenia Kosobokova, P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences; Kári Fannar Lárusson, CAFF Secretariat; Igor Melnikov, P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences; Jim Reist, Fisheries and Oceans Canada; Evan Richardson, Environment Canada; Lindsay Staples, Wildlife Management Advisory Council (North Slope); Cecilie von Quillfeldt, Norwegian Polar Institute. Contributing authors Tom Barry, CAFF Secretariat; Stanislav Belikov, All-Russian Research Institute for Nature Protection; David Boertmann, Danish National Environmental Research Institute; Carolina Behe, Inuit Circumpolar Council; Lyudmila Bogoslovskaya, Russian Institute for Natural and Cultural Heritage; Stanislav Denisenko, Zoological Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences; Jérôme Fort, Danish National Environmental Research Institute; Maria Gavrilo, Arctic Antarctic Institute, St. Petersburg; Igor Krupnik, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Andrey Popov, Arctic Antarctic Institute, St. Petersburg; Clive Tesar, WWF Contributors Peter Armitage, Wolverine and Associates Inc.; Raychelle Daniel, Inuit Circumpolar Council; Gilbert Castellanos, US Fish and Wildlife Service; Mike Gill, Environment Canada; Vic Gillman, Fisheries Joint Management Committee; Trish Hayes, Environment Canada; Henry Huntington, The Pew Environment Group; David Jenkins, US Fish and Wildlife Service; Kristin Laidre, University of Washington; Scot Nickels, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami; Norm Snow, (Inuvialuit) Joint Secretariat; Boris Vdovin, Russian Institute for Natural and Cultural Heritage; Muyin Wang, University of Washington Participants at two CAFF workshops contributed to development of the report and its recommendations (see Appendix 4). Report production Joan Eamer: editing, maps and graphics Megan Osmond-Jones: research and editorial assistance Kári Fannar Lárusson: layout Claire Eamer: copy editing Katerina S. Wessels: translation of Russian source materials Tom Barry and Courtney Price: report production coordination The report benefited greatly from comments and suggestions by the many experts who participated in the CAFF Board review. 5 Abstract Life Linked to Ice examines the consequences for biodiversity of the dramatic changes occurring to sea ice. It was prepared by the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna working group (CAFF), and both draws from and builds on Arctic Council assessments in order to present an overview of the state of knowledge about sea-ice-associated biodiversity. The report is intended as a briefing and reference document for policy makers. Recent changes in Arctic sea ice cover, driven by rising air temperatures, have affected the timing of ice break-up in spring and freeze-up in autumn, as well as the extent and type of ice present in different areas at specific dates. Overall, multi-year ice is rapidly being replaced by first-year ice. The extent of ice is shrinking at all seasons, but especially in the summer. The Arctic Ocean is projected to be virtually ice-free in summer within 30 years, with multi-year ice persisting mainly between islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and in the narrow straits between Canada and Greenland. The most obvious negative impacts of rapid changes in sea ice are on the species that depend on ice as habitat. They include ice algae, ice amphipods, ringed seals and polar bears. The nature of long-term impacts on species that apparently depend partially on ice is less clear. Examples are the polar cod, the dominant fish of the high Arctic, which is strongly associated with ice but also found in open waters, and seabirds that take advantage of high concentrations of food in the productive ice edge zones for egg laying and chick rearing. Impacts of reduced sea ice on humans are also mixed and uncertain. Declining sea ice threatens some Arctic human societies, notably coastal Indigenous Peoples who depend on ice for harvesting and travel and whose cultures and food security are centered on sea ice and its biodiversity. Reduction of sea ice also brings economic opportunities to people both within and beyond Arctic nations. However, new and expanded activities related to resource extraction, shipping, fisheries, and cruise-ship tourism carry substantive risks and downsides to Arctic marine flora and fauna. But sea ice’s association with Arctic biodiversity goes much further than the direct impacts from its loss. Timing, distribution and characteristics of ice cover define and drive the conditions underlying Arctic marine ecosystems, affecting seasonal cycles of light availability, water temperature, nutrients and the flow of energy among the plant and animal communities within and on the underside of ice, in open water and on the ocean bottom. Ecosystems are intricate relationships among these conditions and among the species themselves—and the extent and direction of change for much of Arctic marine biodiversity remains uncertain. Primary production, the building block of food webs, increased by 20% from 1998 to 2009, driven by a 45-day increase in the open-ice period and a reduction in summer ice cover of 27%. But this increase in production is not uniform across the Arctic. Production has decreased or remained stable in some areas, likely related to changes in how nutrients are mixed through the water column, and there are recent signs of further decreases in production. The timing of algal blooms is changing, as are the species of algae dominating the blooms. It is not clear how this change in timing and in the base food source will influence production of invertebrates and the fish, birds and mammals that feed on them. Changes are likely to be quite different in the shallow seas than in the deep Arctic basins. The reduction in sea ice needs to be considered in the context of cumulative effects because it is also contributing to or interacting with other stressors, including development impacts, ocean acidification, and accumulation of persistent organic pollutants and mercury in food webs.