Peril at the top of the Arctic food chain (Berndt-Joel Gunnarsson/Nordic Photos/PlainPicture)
Editorial: “Arctic melt, smash and grab ahead“
“WE ARE witnessing the early stages of the transformation of the Arctic,” says Louis Fortier of Laval University in Quebec City, Canada. For millennia, the top of the planet has been the preserve of specialist organisms, from fish with antifreeze running through their veins to bears capable of fasting for months. That’s all changing. An increasingly ice-free Arctic is opening a new frontier for life on Earth.
There are some windows into this warmer future: natural open-water hotspots that have always…
