Infographic 5 — The Canadian Arctic: Changing sea ice is affecting marine food webs

An infographic shows how changing sea ice is affecting marine food webs. A mixture of photos and simplified images are shown over a map of part of the Canadian Arctic. At top left there's a photo from Hudson Bay of a polar bear with orange/yellow? (red would be blood?!)-stained feet from eating eggs with text describing the scene above it in a white box. Three large blue bubbles are in the middle of the infographic. The left bubble shows an icon of a healthy polar bear with an arrow pointing towards a skinnier polar bear showing a loss in body fat. The second bubble shows a partial icon of a beluga with a cod and a capelin. The third bubble shows icons of sea ice with green algae growing on the bottom as well as green spots in the open water representing phytoplankton. There is an arrow between the two types of algae indicating a shift from ice algae to phytoplankton. From the ice algae there is a thin arrow pointing to a halibut and a thick arrow points from the phytoplankton to the same halibut. , The simplified scene in the third bubble represents a changing food web. The second and third bubble both have arrows pointing to Cumberland Sound on the northeast end of the Arctic map. In the bottom right corner is a photo of the ship Nuliajuk in Cumberland Sound and a bowhead whale skull. In the bottom left corner there's a white box with a yellow icon with a question mark in it representing “key unknowns”.

• Hudson Bay polar bear with egg-stained paws. Bears eat more eggs when they cannot access their preferred prey, seals.
• Greenland
• Baffin Bay
• Baffin Island
• Cumberland Sound
• Decreases in food quality and availability lowers body fat of some species
• Predatory fish and mammals are eating different prey in some areas
• Ecosystem is changing from an ice (ice algae) to open-water (phytoplankton) supported food web
• The Naliajuk at anchor in Cumberland Sound. A bowhead whale skull is a remnant of an old whaling station
• Key unknowns
• Are food webs changing across the Canadian Arctic?
• Will food web changes make ecosystems weaker?