Kaktovik

The Arctic Sounder - Serving the Northwest Arctic and the North Slope

Looking over a longer time span, bears in the southern Beaufort Sea are now using land to an extent they haven’t used it historically,” a researcher said.

As Arctic sea ice melts, polar bears are spending more time near the Alaska North Slope village of Kaktovik. Now, federal prosecutors have charging a whaling captain there with killing one in violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake rattled a remote region of Alaska's North Slope southeast of Prudhoe Bay Sunday morning. The state seismologist called it the biggest quake ever recorded in the region.

The Air Force is trying to better understand the erosion bearing down on its valuable radar sites.

More polar bears on land have been encountering more people in the Arctic, a perfect storm of dangerous conditions, one scientist says.

Sixty years ago there were 12 of these such cellars in Kaktovik.Today there is only one left. All the other family cellars have been flooded and have collapsed.

Sixty years ago, around the time when Matthew Rexford's father's father was turning the ground to build his own ice cellar as a proud whaling captain, there were 12 of these such cellars in Kaktovik. Today there is only one left.

The bears that come to the northern village of Kaktovik are climate refugees, on land because the sea ice they rely on for hunting seals is receding.

Because ice makes up a good portion of the underground foundation of northern Alaska, thawing has dropped the landscape as much as 3 feet in some places.