YEKATERINBURG, November 22. /TASS/. The walruses, which were seen in October on Yamal, had come to the peninsula because of a good food base - a mollusk, whose shells scientists found on the peninsula, reads an article published in the Science in Siberia magazine, registered with the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Siberian branch.
In October 2019, scientists discovered more than a thousand walruses on the northwestern coast of the Yamal Peninsula. Previously, experts said walruses were there only incidentally and for short terms, and the animals had not formed permanent rookeries there.
"A probable reason why so many walruses have chosen to come to Yamal is a good food base," the article reads. "Walruses prefer the bivalve mollusk - Serripes Groenlandicus - the shells of which scientists found on the shore near the animals."
Experts now work on a three-year program of comprehensive studies to preserve the walruses’ rookery on the peninsula. This is the second case walruses get crowded in the Russian Arctic in recent years - in 2007, walruses were attracted to the Kozhevnikov Cape in Chukotka, the article says.
Walruses are large marine mammals listed in the Red Data Books of Russia and Yamal. Their rookeries are resting places in autumn, when large areas of the Arctic seas are free from ice.