[ISL] "Sable Island horses, walruses to be discussed at meeting"

[rfmcdonald]

CBC News' Jennifer Henderson reports on the latest studies into the biological history of Nova Scotia's Sable Island. Apparently, before the famous horses appeared, the island hosted a large and genetically distinctive walrus population exterminated by hunters.

Brenna McLeod Frasier, a biologist and research associate with the Nova Scotia Museum, says accounts from early explorers suggest there were as many as 100,000 walrus in the Maritimes, including in the Bay of Fundy, Sable and Magdalen Islands.

The walruses disappeared by the end of the 1700s.

"People were hunting them for their tusks which were almost like an ivory similar to an elephant ivory," says McLeod Frasier, who is also an educator with the Canadian Whale Institute.

"They also wanted the hide and their blubber. The walrus had a lot of blubber which could be rendered down to an oil which could be used for various products," she said.

McLeod Frasier has taken DNA, tusks and jawbones from 278 specimens found on Sable Island in recent decades to conclude the mammal here was different from the walrus found today in the North.

"Our Maritime walrus, as we have 'tagged' them, were larger and more robust animals. They were also genetically distinctive," she said.