Last month, villagers in Savoonga landed a bowhead whale. Before 2017, in every January people can remember, sea ice surrounded St. Lawrence Island, locking it in for the winter. Boat-launching and whale-taking were not possible. Now, the disc of ice chunks floating on the northern oceans is smaller than any recent year except 2010. […]
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Two great bears are emblematic of the Arctic: Ursa Major – arktos in Greek – the constellation from which the Arctic derives its name, and the polar bear, which has lived beneath the northern stars for hundreds of thousands of years. It’s hard to imagine the region without either of them, but […]
The timing of the first entry of humans into North America across the Bering Strait has now been set back 10,000 years. This has been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt by Ariane Burke, a professor in Université de Montréal’s Department of Anthropology, and her doctoral student Lauriane Bourgeon, with the contribution of […]
The annual migration of some beluga whales in Alaska is altered by sea ice changes in the Arctic, while other belugas do not appear to be affected. A new study led by the University of Washington finds that as Arctic sea ice takes longer to freeze up each fall due to climate change, one […]