35,000 Walruses Gathered Together In One Spot For One Disturbing Reason

From a distance, this sight may look like an ordinary rocky beach. But wait until you take a closer look. You’ll realize those aren’t rocks. The shore is actually covered with thousands of misplaced walruses.

Walruses typically relies on stretches of ice for resting and breeding while hunting for food. Unfortunately, due to the warming climate, bigger pieces of sea ice are now too far on places that is too deep for walruses to dive for food. Thousand of walruses were left without choice but to gather together on one of the last place they will be able to rest in Alaska – the shore.

An estimated 35,000 walruses gather together on share near point Lay, Alaska.

The Pacific walruses are coming to shore in record numbers due to the absence of sea ice they can rest in between hunts.

The gathering was spotted during an annual marine mammal survey.

The Pacific Walrus relies on sea ice for resting and breeding while hunting food.

Because of the warming climate, the Alaskan sea ice have increasingly retreated up north into the Arctic Ocean. It’s sad news for the walruses, they greatly rely on it for everything from breeding and resting after diving for food.

The Pacific Walrus relies on sea ice for resting and breeding while hunting food.

“The gathering of walrus on shore is a phenomenon that has accompanied the loss of summer sea ice as the climate has warmed,” reports Associated Press.

Unlike seals, walrus cannot swim indefinitely and must rest.

Since Pacific walruses cannot swim as well as other marine mammals, they rely on sea ice to rest while swimming.

Female walrus usually leave their young safely on top of the sea ice while they forage.

Then they haul foods above the sea ice to nurse their young.

The smaller walruses are in danger of being trampled in stampedes.

Unfortunately, on a gathering like this, mostly are females and their young. And the smaller ones are very much in danger of getting trampled to death by the much larger adult walruses.

The 35,000 walruses are stuck until more sea ice returns in winter.

This isn’t the first time a large herd of walruses were spotted on land. This happened before in 2009 and 2011. The future doesn’t look good for these poor animals if nothing is done to reduce the damage of climate change to their environment.

This photos are extremely sad. It’s even more sad to think that there are people out there who don’t believe climate change is real. Let’s just hope everyone will realize it soon before it’s already too late. Remember, we only have one planet to live.