Facts About Walrus Habitat
The first thing one will notice about walrus habitat is that it's for the most part cold. The walrus will spend most of its time in the waters and rocky islands, headlands, or ice floes of the Arctic Ocean. A single word describing walrus habitat would be "circumpolar".
There are two main groups of walruses, all found in the Arctic Ocean (there are no walruses in the Antarctic). The Pacific walrus is found in the Bering Sea between Alaska and Russia, along the northern coast of Alaska, and along the Chukchi Sea and the northern coast of Russia and Siberia. The Atlantic walrus is found in the Arctic regions of eastern Canada and along the northern coastlines of Greenland.
Walrus Habitat - The walrus likes it on the somewhat cool side, where the air temperature ranges from the single digits to about 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Walruses spend most of their time in the water, though they seldom if ever venture out into the deep ocean, preferring water that is no more than a couple of hundred feet deep. Given the choice between dry land and an ice floe, the walrus will invariably choose the latter, and some times migrate from place to place by hitching a ride on an ice floe or drifting along with the pack ice, rather than by swimming. When found on land, it is usually during the summer months, where they often congregate in colonies or herds of over a thousand, there being no ice floes near by to rest on.
Walrus habitat is constantly under pressure from humans and human encroachment, humans being one of the walrus' major predator, the main predators being killer whales and polar bears. Global warming is also having a large impact on walrus habitat. This is most evident along the northern coast of Alaska, which in the past has been ice bound during the winter months, but during the past decade or two has seen the ice pack slowly moving northward.
While the Pacific walrus usually migrates in tune with the boundaries of the ice pack, the Atlantic walrus seems to stay more or less in one area the year round, that area being the far northern islands of eastern Canada, and the northwestern and northeastern coasts of Greenland, where the pack ice tends to remain fairly close to land. The Pacific walrus migrates to the south Bering Sea during the summer months, and spends much of the summer on land as the ice packs move northwards.
Habitat May Be A Limiting Factor - While the walrus population, once threatened due to hunting, has recovered to the point where several hundred thousand of the animals now exist, and exist under protection except for native hunting rights, the walrus habitat itself appears to place limits on just how large the overall walrus population can be. Although the bulk of the walrus population appears to be in the Pacific, it seems the Atlantic walrus habitat should be able to sustain a much larger population than it presently does. The size of the Atlantic walrus population is not well known, though is believed to be significantly smaller than that of the Pacific walrus population.
The walrus is one tough animal, big enough and strong enough to fend or itself in most cases, while having ample insulation to be able to withstand one of the earth's more hostile habitats, a habitat shared by polar bears, whales, fish, and few others. It is to be hoped that the walrus will not fall victim to global warming, or should the Arctic ice pack eventually disappear altogether during the summer months, the walrus will be able to make do on land, even though it much prefers hanging out on a passing ice floe.