"Walrus from Space" is a project of the World Wildlife Fund and the British Antarctic Survey. Thanks to him, the number of walruses in the wild and how their population is developing in the Atlantic Ocean and the Laptev Sea will become known.
This was reported on the website of the World Wide Fund for Nature.
Environmentalists and scientists want to attract half a million volunteers around the world to count walruses. During four years, the participants will look at thousands of satellite images, "catch" walruses on them and submit the results to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) or the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
This program will give scientists a better idea of how global warming affects walrus species. The habitat of walruses warms three times faster than the rest of the territory, and every decade the area of summer sea ice decreases by 13%.
"The melting of the ice cover leads to the fact that walruses swim longer and spend more energy on the way to food. They appear more and more often on land — and this threatens that the cubs that will appear on land may turn out to be crushed by their adult relatives," said Hannah Kubins, a researcher at the British Antarctic Service.
Note that, according to the WWF, about 250 animals live in the wild. Atlantic and 200 thousand Pacific walruses.
