Bowhead Whale Migration Begins In October, But This Year, Not 1 Sighted In Chukchi Sea (AK)
The fingerprints of climate change have been everywhere in Alaska. July was the state's all-time hottest month; sea surface temperatures have been breaking records around Alaska's coastline; and reports of salmon die-offs came in from across the state as river temperatures hit 70 degrees Fahrenheit. At a time when the Arctic's sea ice pack normally would be nearing the Alaska coastline, the ice pack is still 400 miles north of Utqiagvik. What little snow there is in Utqiagvik has been melting, with temperatures above freezing and five October days breaking or tying heat records.
And now—the whales. "We just haven't been seeing bowhead whales in October," said Megan Ferguson, a research biologist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "It's the big mystery: where are the bowheads?"
Since 1979, the federal government has flown planes over the area to track the bowheads' migration and ensure that their population is bouncing back after it dwindled to around 3,000 at the end of commercial whaling in the early 1900s. Ferguson, the co-lead of that project, has been a part of the work since 2008. "I don't think we've seen a single bowhead whale in the Chukchi Sea this year, and that's a total anomaly," she said.
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In Utqiagvik, where 63 percent of the population is Iñupiat Iñupiaq, many people rely on food they hunt and catch, and they count on the fall whale hunt to fill their ice cellars for the winter. "We depend on it as our greatest food source for the cold winters," said Herman Ahsoak, a whaling captain and board member of the Barrow Whaling Captains Association. "We've never seen something like this," he said. If the whales don't arrive soon, "we're going to go hungry."
EDIT
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31102019/climate-change-alaska-missing-bowhead-whale-migration-krill-canada-arctic-sea-ice
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