A unique animal - Atlantic walrus - lives in the ecological region of the Barents Sea. Huge mammals drift on giant ice floes along the northern coast of the harsh Atlantic. They bask, imposingly lounging on stony braids framing ocean waters.
Atlantic Giants in the Red Book
The livestock of these pinnipeds is rapidly declining. Therefore, the Atlantic walrus has been taken under protection in Russia. The Red Book, where these animals got, is trying to prevent the disappearance of a unique subspecies. Large walrus rookeries are declared protected.
The marine animal population includes isolated herds with little contact. Their number sharply decreased due to uncontrolled commercial fishing. Of the 25,000 heads, about 4,000 animals remained.
Description of Atlantic walruses
Information about these giants of the Arctic is very scarce. Walruses are large animals with brown-brown skin. The weight of 3-4-meter males is about two tons, and for females growing in length up to 2.6 meters, it approaches a ton. Huge mammals have a small head with a wide muzzle and tiny eyes.
The upper jaw is decorated with two powerful fangs up to 35-50 centimeters long. Tusks easily pierce the ice. They help a clumsy animal climb ice floes from sea waters. Tusks are weapons against rivals and protection against enemies. Walruses are often pierced by fangs of polar bears.
The mighty Atlantic walrus, whose photo is not easy to make, has another ingenious device - a straw-colored mustache. They form hundreds of stiff hairs. The hairs are thick, like the outskirts of bird feathers, sensitive, like fingers. Thanks to them, walruses distinguish even the smallest objects and easily find mollusks that have drilled into the oceanic soil.
Outwardly, the Atlantic walrus looks completely unattractive. Its description is as follows: a fat body lying on a rocky beach, riddled with fatty folds and deep scars, emits a pungent fetid odor; tiny eyes, bloodshot, fester. The body of adult walruses is strewn with rare coarse hair, and young growth is wrapped in a dense dark brown hair.
On land, the walrus is Atlantic clumsy, it is difficult to move around, fingering with all four flippers. And in the ocean he feels great, easily gliding in the water column. Apparently, it is for this reason that he mainly lies on a rocky beach, and actively moves in sea waters.
Shellfish and crustaceans are the main food of the mighty beast. Although it happens that he attacks cubs of a seal. The giant animal feels full, eating 35-50 kg of food.
Mating season and reproduction
Atlantic walrus has a life expectancy of 45 years. He is slowly growing up. His maturity occurs at 6-10 years. Walruses can not only doze, burp, snarl, engage in fights, but also bark.
Strong beasts are very musical. Their musicality is most clearly manifested in the mating season. In January-April, pinnipeds expressively sing. Giants mate in May-June. The female carries the fetus for 12 months.
Her cubs appear with a frequency of once every two or three years. After all, the mother has to feed the puppy up to two years. And walrus males remain with their mother for up to 5 years. The female never leaves the herd (by and large it is formed by females with cubs).
Habitat
Walruses live in rarefied ice fields, wormwood stains, in the open ocean. For life, they choose water areas with a depth of 20-30 meters. Rookeries are preferred on ice and rocky coasts. Their annual migration is due to the movement of ice. Climbing onto a drifting ice floe, they swim, as if on a sea vessel, to their habitual habitats, where, having chosen land, they make fallow lands.
Distribution area
These pinnipeds live along the shores of the Barents and Kara Seas. They have chosen the bays, lagoons and lips that cut the shores of multiple islands in this region. The ice and coastal rookeries of the subspecies are scattered across Franz Joseph Land.
The northeastern tip of Novaya Zemlya is a place that has inhabited the Atlantic walrus and is invariably returning there. In the eastern regions of the Kara Sea, you will not meet him often. He arranges his abode in the White Sea, on the Kanin Peninsula , on the islands of Kolguev and Vaigach.
He likes the eastern coast of the Canadian Arctic. In this region, the Hudson's Bay and Strait, Frobisher and Fox Cove, Baffin Island, Devon Island became his abode. Less commonly, it forms a bed on the Arctic islands, west of the Barrow Strait. He settled the Baffin Sea, Greenland from the west coast, the waters of the Strait of Davis.
The European Atlantic has placed at the disposal of the pinnipeds the drifting ice of Northern Iceland, the lips and lagoons that have gone into Svalbard. Norway from the northern coastline sheltered individual individuals.
Limiting reasons
The population of a powerful beast declined sharply due to increased fishing. The Atlantic walrus living in the Kara Sea was especially badly damaged. Pinnipeds were brutally exterminated in the 19th century. In some regions they were completely destroyed. The most severe extermination of the population was in the Canadian Arctic, Greenland, Svalbard.
Nowadays, the number of animals limits the rapid management of man. Especially the offensive of oil and gas companies involved in the development of new fields. They catastrophically pollute the natural habitats of the Atlantic giants, expelling them from the inhabited territories. Given the low potential, it is difficult to counter inadequate fishing pressures and other anthropogenic aspects.
Walruses are affected by 10 varieties of helminths. Diseases and causes of death of pinnipeds have not been clarified by scientists. Killer whales and polar bears are considered natural enemies of the population.