⑵ The Arctic Ocean may seem remote and forbidding, but to birds, whales and otheranimals, it’s a top-notch dining destination. “It’s a great place to get food in the summertime, so animals are flying or swimmingthousands of miles to get there,” said Kevin R. Arrigo, a biological oceanographer atStanford University. But the menu is changing. Confirming earlier research, scientists reported Wednesdaythat global warming is altering the ecology of the Arctic Ocean on a huge scale.The annual production of algae, the base of the food web, increased an estimated 47percent between 1997 and 2015, and the ocean is greening up much earlier each year.These changes are likely to have a profound impact for animals further up the foodchain, such as birds, seals, polar bears and whales. But scientists still don’t knowenough about the biology of the Arctic Ocean to predict what the ecosystem will looklike in decades to come. Since the mid-2000s, researchers like Dr. Arrigo have been trying to assess the effectsof retreating ice on the Arctic ecosystem. The sun returns to the Arctic each spring and melts some of the ice that formed inwinter. Algae in the open water quickly spring to life and start growing. These algae arethe base of the food chain in the Arctic Ocean, grazed by krill and other invertebratesthat in turn support bigger fish, mammals and birds.