The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
"Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers", Ifft declared, "all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81deg 29min. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulfstream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones," the report continued, "while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared."
"Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds."
I’m sorry, I neglected to mention that this report was reported by the AP and published in The Washington Post on November 2, 1922.
