RESEARCH carried out at the Dunstaffnage-based Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) has shown that a predicted population decrease of polar bears by around 30 per cent over the next three to four decades may have been underestimated.
Already bleak population predictions have considered the reduction of sea ice in the region as a loss of habitat, restricting the bears’ movements, hunting prospects and cubs’ survival.
But research led by SAMS scientist Thomas Brown, published in the journal PLOS ONE, has highlighted how the polar bear diet relies heavily on the production of microscopic algae that grow underneath the sea ice. The algae are eaten by zooplankton and this energy works its way up the food chain to the region’s top predator