On Sunday night, a plump ringed seal pup was spotted on the ice in front of Breaker’s Bar on Nome’s Front Street. UAF Alaska Sea Grant agent Gay Sheffield was called and moved the pup to a more secluded beach. The ice had likely gone out too fast and the mother finished up the normal weaning process on the ice chunks in front of Nome.
Near Nome, reports of seal pups and walrus calves hauled out on beaches are piling up at an unprecedented rate.
John Ahkvaluk , 56, a polar bear guard revealed that this is not a good sign for the village. It’s the first time in several years that bears come at this time of the year. “It’s a warning that they got no food out there and they came looking for it here,” he said. After the incident, Luchie Manlangit, the school principal, and I invited John Ahkvaluk to talk to the kids and to share some protocols if polar bear will come around again.
The community of Gambell fought a distemper outbreak among its dog population this spring and managed to squash the epidemic in its early onset. Distemper is a deadly disease that can afflict dogs and wildlife alike and also has been documented in the North Atlantic to jump from dogs to marine mammals like seals.
The appearance of walrus on the ice off Nome added some excitement to the onset of spring.
Alaska Sea Grant agent Gay Sheffield from Nome responded to report of a dead bowhead and a dead grey whale northeast of Shishmaref near Cape Espenburg.
Public health officials confirmed that four Nome residents had been hospitalized in early January with preliminary results pointing to poising from foodborne type E botulism from an aged beluga flipper.
Walruses were found washed up on the beaches from Cape Espenberg to Shishmaref and further west. Samples taken from the intestines of four walrus all had moderate to high levels of saxitoxin.
The virus was first reported among brown skua on Bird Island, off South Georgia. Since then, researchers and observers have reported mass deaths of elephant seals, as well as increased deaths of fur seals, kelp gulls and brown skua at several other sites. Researchers warn of one of ‘largest ecological disasters of modern times’ if the highly contagious disease reaches penguin colonies.
Nearly 60 polar bears have been stranded on the Arctic coast near a remote village in Russia's Far East after warm winter weather hampered their hunting routine.
Avian flu has decimated the marine creatures on the country’s Pacific coastline and scientists fear it could be jumping from mammal to mammal
Researchers in Canada find that population did not bother making the 6,000km roundtrip in 2018-2019
Declining fertility and rising mortality, exacerbated by fishing industry, prompts experts to warn whales could be extinct by 2040
Scientists are baffled by a wave of whale deaths - which saw more carcasses wash up on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland in the past month than in the previous decade.
Researchers say their absence is a stark reminder that the orcas are slowly starving to death because there is not enough Chinook salmon to sustain them.
People in southern Labrador and along Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula are being cautioned to be on the lookout for the bears, who have already begun to move north.
“Last year we got several reports from tourists and scientists that they saw around six walruses dead here on the west side of Svalbard. Unfortunately, we couldn’t sample them as the dead walruses drifted away by the time we got to the place. But it’s not normal to get so many reported dead walruses in such a small area," said Christian Lydersen, senior scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute. Now samples (collected by a Station Manager in July 2023) have tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza.
A rare whale-dolphin hybrid species has been discovered off the coast of Hawaii, scientists say. The animal is the first-ever documented offspring of a rough-toothed dolphin and the rare melon-headed whale, a team from the Cascadia Research Collective concluded in a report released this week.
Pods of killer whales are stalking the boats of Alaska fishermen and stealing their halibut catches, leaving the men with no fish and thousands of gallons of fuel wasted trying to flee. It’s not...
All Topics
All Countries
Any Date
Apply