On a microscopic level, scientists also have found plankton in the North Atlantic where it had not existed for at least 800,000 years.
The whale's odyssey and the surprising appearance of the plankton indicate a migration of species through the Northwest Passage, a worrying sign of how global warming is affecting animals and plants in the oceans as well as on land.
"The implications are enormous. It's a threshold that has been crossed," said Philip Reid of the Alister Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science in Plymouth, England.
"It's an indication of the speed of change that is taking place in our world in the present day because of climate change," he said in a telephone interview Friday.
Reid said the last time the world witnessed such a major incursion from the Pacific was 2 million years ago, which had "a huge impact on the North Atlantic," driving some species to extinction as the newcomers dominated the competition for food. Read the full report here.
Source: by Arthur Max, Detroit Free Press, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
