"Lacking sea ice, army of walruses opts for Alaska" by Dan Joling | Associated Press, October 02, 2013
ANCHORAGE — An estimated 10,000 walruses unable to find sea ice over shallow Arctic Ocean water have come ashore on Alaska’s northwest coast.
Honestly, I'm tired of the fart mist.
Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration photographed walruses on Friday packed onto a beach on a barrier island near Point Lay, an Inupiat Eskimo village 300 miles southwest of Barrow and 700 miles northwest of Anchorage.
The walruses have been coming to shore since mid-September. The large herd was spotted during NOAA’s annual arctic marine mammal aerial survey, an effort conducted with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency that conducts offshore lease sales.
Like I would believe anything they say.
An estimated 2,000 to 4,000 walruses were photographed at the site Sept. 12.
Are they still there? That was over three weeks before.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency that manages walruses, immediately took steps to prevent a stampede among the animals, which were packed shoulder to shoulder on the rocky coastline. The agency works with villages to keep people and airplanes a safe distance from herds.
Young animals are especially vulnerable to stampedes triggered by a polar bear, a human hunter, or a low-flying airplane. The carcasses of more than 130 mostly young walruses were counted after a stampede in September 2009 at Alaska’s Icy Cape.
The gathering of walruses on shore is a phenomenon that has accompanied the loss of summer sea ice as the climate has warmed.
This Globe treat sucks.
Pacific walruses spend winters in the Bering Sea. Females give birth on sea ice and use ice as a diving platform to reach snails, clams, and worms on the shallow continental shelf.
As temperatures warm in summer, the edge of the sea ice recedes north.
And the agenda-pushers start screaming global warming. Ice melts in summer, imagine that.
Females and their young ride the edge of the sea ice into the Chukchi Sea. However, in recent years, sea ice has receded north beyond continental shelf waters and into Arctic Ocean water 10,000 feet deep or more, where walrus cannot dive to the bottom.
Walruses in large numbers were first spotted on the US side of the Chukchi Sea in 2007.
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Related: Sunday Globe Special: The Rising Level of Bulls****
Better take a ferry then:
"Alaska ferries lose nature experts to budget cuts" Associated Press, April 29, 2013
JUNEAU, Alaska — Alaska’s state-owned ferries, which shuttle residents and tourists between remote towns on the coasts of Washington state, Canada, and Alaska, are reducing costs by eliminating the use of naturalists on all but one ship.
In past summers, several of the 11 vessels have had a nature expert who teaches passengers about the stunning local scenery and animals.
State officials say the program may eventually be brought back, but for now the plan is to replace the experts with computer programs and brochures on the so-called Alaska Marine Highway System, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
With state revenues declining, departments have been asked to bring expenses down by eliminating items that do not affect core functions.
Naturalists, who are hired and paid by the US Forest Service or the US Fish and Wildlife Service, make about $22,000 a season. The state provides them free room and board on the ferry, which costs about $5,000 per year, per ship, according to Jeremy Woodrow, a spokesman for the Alaska Department of Transportation, the department responsible for the ferry system.
Only four of the ships in the aging fleet were built after 1980, but they remain a crucial link connecting the state’s coastal cities to the rest of the world. The only way to reach Alaska’s capital, Juneau, for instance, is to fly or take a ferry.
Many of the ferries’ passengers are Alaska residents shuttling from town to town or back from the mainland. But the trips also draw adventuresome tourists.
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Damn! Stuck in shit!
