Savoonga

By Diana Haecker

A six-inch butter clam harvested on August 28 three miles north of Savoonga tested positive for saxitoxins, or paralytic shellfish poison, Norton Sound Health Corporation Environmental Coordinator Emma Pate said.The clam itself showed high levels of saxitoxin present: it had 450 micrograms of toxin per 100 gram of body tissue. The Food and Drug Administration’s safety limit is at 80 micrograms/100 g. Pate, via the SEATOR lab, on Sept. 23 issued a paralytic shellfish toxin advisory to Savoonga and Gambell.

Earlier this week, a pod of about nine Bowhead whales were seen off the northern coast of Savoonga but young ice conditions around St. Lawrence Island prevented hunting. If local hunters hauled a whale out onto young ice, it would break apart.

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About a month ago, residents of St. Lawrence Island found a patch of oily, white goo on the beach, along with some dead sea birds covered in the substance.

Instead of halibut, fisherman are increasingly catching less valuable Pacific cod, voracious bottom feeders whose numbers in recent years have exploded.

As spring walrus hunting season gets underway, residents of St. Lawrence Island talk about sea ice changes and how they affect the village.

Hundreds of birds washed up on the shores of St. Lawrence Island.

With ice declining, bowhead whales of the Pacific Arctic choose to stay longer in the waters up north. A change in migration patterns could affect the bowheads' health and safety, as well as the hunters' access to the subsistence resource.

Researchers now are uncertain when and to what extent the ice may return, and have scrambled to better understand the consequences of back-to-back years of its loss.