The two men, who were both part of an active whaling crew, were in one of the boats on a towline, towing a whale to shore, when their boat flipped, according to fellow whalers who were there when it happened.
Staff from the governor's office responded and found two bulls entangled on the shore. One lay dead in the water, and another could not move. A third bull had managed to get loose.
The ice conditions are similar to last year (with) lots of young ice and close leads," said Captain Frederick Brower. "We all went out and broke trail to the edge, but a high west wind came along and added about three-quarters to 1 mile of ice and (we) had to break trail through that and began whaling from the new edge ... . The conditions were not favorable but we made due with what we had and continued on with our whaling season."
The roughly 300 miles of hard-packed snow roads were constructed under the Community Winter Access Trails (CWAT) project, headed by the North Slope Borough.
Late December and early January starts to the off-road season have become normal as warmer temperatures continue to mark the winter months across most of the Arctic. While industry has had to adapt to changes, many locals are still struggling to find a new normal amidst the shifting seasons.
Vitamin D deficiencies have long been a concern in high latitudes because sunlight — which stimulates its production in the body — is scarce in winter months.
Alaska Department of Fish and Game records show two other unusually wayward moose hunts: One in 2016 taken north of Teshekpuk Lake along the Arctic coast, and another in 2014 on the Kokolik River near Point Lay.
New research shows that permafrost soils hold massive quantities of mercury — nearly twice as much as is held in all other soils in the world, plus the mercury in the oceans and the atmosphere —
The animals didn't necessarily become sick, researchers said, but were encountering the new pathogens much more frequently.
Disaster funds are reserved for single events, and storms that collectively cause much damage aren't often individually large enough to count as disasters.
A seawall planned for Utqiagvik is aimed at protecting residents from extreme storms while preserving their connection to the ocean.
Cleanup and recovery from the recent storm that battered the North Slope coastline may carry a price tag exceeding $10 million.
The flooding was caused by a weather system that moved up to the Bering Sea from the tropics, and raised water levels and dumped rain across much of western Alaska.
T. gondii infection in people was found to be associated with drinking water from home water tanks where T. gondii parasites remained, clinging to the walls—so cleaning of these water tanks would be one way to reduce infection.
The unexpected appearance of sinkholes or groundwater flooding is something to which residents have grown accustomed.
Beavers live in every province of Canada, every U.S. state and into northern Mexico. Range maps now need to be redrawn to include areas north of treeline in Alaska and Canada.
Sleeper sharks are already known to range as far north as the Chukchi Sea, but reports of possible shark attacks on seal and sea lions have increased — and now come from further into the Arctic.
Technology has changed, communities have moved, people have grown older, and the beluga whales the Kanigmiut have relied on for generations have all but disappeared.
Chris Burn at Carleton University is tracking the growing cost of maintaining Yukon’s Dempster Highway as warmer weather brings more landslides, washouts and other challenges.
Eastern Finnmark, on the coast of the Barents Sea has always proved to be the cleanest of all areas of testing in the North Atlantic. But not so any more.
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