Background Articles

Since June 1 2018, NOAA has received reports of 282 dead ice seals in the Bering and Chukchi seas. NOAA said they typically receive reports of about 29 ice seal strandings a year.

Nuiqsut's Napageak crew, captained by Thomas Napageak, landed the very first bowhead of the season on Aug. 29. It was a 29.5 foot whale.

The top of the world saw record-beating average temperatures flashing through all three summer months.

Two separate pods of pilot whales have gotten beached on Icelandic shores this summer, RÚV reports, leading experts to apprise locals of how best they can respond to such situations. Marine biologist Edda Elísabet Magnúsdóttir says that such beachings are becoming a yearly occurrence – an indirect result of warming ocean temperatures – and likely […]

We isolated Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) from brain samples of 2 seals with lethal encephalitis at Weihai Aquarium, Weihai, China, in 2017. We confirmed our findings by immunohistochemical staining and electron microscopy. Phylogenetic analysis showed this virus was genotype I. Our findings suggest that JEV might disseminate though infected zoo animals.

Earth’s natural cycles can’t account for the recent warming seen over the past 100 years, new research suggests.

From California to Alaska, animals born during the infamous Blob are coming of age.

During a workshop in Nome this week, scientists and residents discussed algal toxins’ role in the changing Bering Sea ecosystem.

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.

No whaling will take place in Icelandic waters this summer, it has been confirmed. The news is not the result of government intervention, but rather of commercial concerns. This will be the first time in 17 years that there will be no whaling.

Biologists in Southeast Alaska are racing to examine a wave of whale carcasses to try and find what’s killing gray whales up and down the Pacific Coast. Nearly 170 have been reported triggering NOAA Fisheries to launch an investigation.

Five of the highly endangered whales have been found dead in Canadian waters over the last month. Measures have been put in place to prevent more deaths by reducing the potential for ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement.

Sea surface temperatures are 9 degrees higher than normal in some areas off Western Alaska.

Since January 1, 2019, elevated gray whale strandings have occurred along the west coast of North America from Mexico through Alaska. This event has been declared an Unusual Mortality Event (UME).

A rare whale skull discovered by an Inuit hunter in Greenland has been confirmed by a Canadian scientist to be the hybrid calf of a beluga father and a narwhal mother — otherwise known as a narluga.

A ten-year study of Chukchi Polar Bears, conducted from 2008 to 2018, found more bears than expected — and healthy ones, too. That’s despite sea ice loss in the Bering and Chukchi Seas.

NOAA is investigating what it’s calling “unusually large numbers” of seal deaths.

About 70 gray whales have been spotted dead so far this year along the West Coast from California to Alaska, the most in almost 20 years. Many of them appeared malnourished, according to NOAA officials.

Researchers are trying to determine the cause of a gray whale die-off along the West Coast, including Alaska. And they're looking at whether recent warming trends in the Arctic, and reduced sea ice, has affected their prey.

A female adult Southern resident killer whale and her three-and-a-half-year-old calf are rapidly declining in health in what appears to be a troubling situation for the creatures.