TOM KIZZIA Daily News reporter
The first boat of hunters shoved off the beach at Cape Prince of Wales Friday in search of seals and walrus, signaling the start of the early winter hunting season on the Bering Strait. It was not a moment too soon for the subsistence-dependent villagers of Wales.
Normally, the hunting season is wrapping up by now, said village hunter Toby Anungazuk. But like sea hunters elsewhere on the coast, Wales hunters wait for the sea ice before they push off.
This year, the ice in Alaska's northern seas has been more than a month late arriving.
"The first boat is hunting now," Anungazuk said Friday afternoon, "but others are leery of going out because the wind is from the east and it can get strong very quickly."
While scientists debate whether the late-coming ice is the latest evidence of global warming, coastal hunters say they are definitely seeing a trend. Anungazuk said the ice regularly comes a month later than it did 20 years ago, and some two months later than 30 years ago.
Coupled with early breakups, that means the hunting seasons are getting shorter, said Caleb Pungowiyi, natural resources director for the Nome-based non-profit group Kawerak.
"People are probably making do with less," Pungowiyi said. "But it also means some hunters are taking more chances, hunting in marginal weather conditions."
Sea ice has been a month late this winter in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, said Russ Page, an Anchorage-based ice forecaster for the National Weather Service. This follows a summer that saw a record minimum icepack in the eastern Chukchi and western Beaufort, according to records going back three decades.
Finally this week, the season has kicked into gear and the ice is spreading fast down toward the Bering Sea, Page said.
For Gunter Weller, a professor of geophysics at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, this looks like evidence that the Earth is getting warmer.
"Sea ice is a pretty sensitive indicator," said Weller. "It doesn't take much (temperature change) to make a change in the ice."
There are normal cycles in Arctic water temperatures, and there are also warm-water cycles associated with El Nino, Weller said. But evidence going back to 1955 - using Soviet ice pack data only recently made available - suggests to him that there is a warming trend on top of these regular oscillations.
"To say this is going to continue forever would be to stick one's neck out," Weller said. "But this so-called greenhouse effect is something that can't be ignored any longer."
Weller noted that researchers this year at the National Science Foundation's ice camp Sheba north of Alaska found the polar ice cap to be considerably thinner than previous studies showed. In fact, they couldn't find an ice floe thick enough to anchor their icebreaker safely and had to make do with something less, Weller said.
The absence of sea ice could also be contributing to higher temperatures, Weller said.
The reason is that open water warms the atmosphere more than the icepack does. If there's less ice in the fall, the air grows warmer still. This "feedback" process amplifies climate change in northern latitudes, making the Arctic an especially important zone for researchers.
But not everyone is sure the late sea ice is part of a long-term warming trend. Craig Evanego, a researcher at the National Ice Center, agrees that ice north of Alaska was at a record minimum this summer. But on the other side of the pole, north of Russia, the Barents and Kara seas saw unusually heavy ice this year, he said. That suggests Alaska's warming may be due to local conditions rather than global shifts, he said.
For traditional hunting cultures on the coast, the debate is not just academic.
Shorter, warmer winters may be helping some land animals, such as grizzly bears and beaver. But concerns have been raised on the North Slope about disrupted polar bear migrations. And in the Bering Sea, young seals may be abandoning the ice in spring before they are fully weaned, said Pungowiyi, the former head of the Alaska Eskimo Walrus Commission.
An increase in the amount of open water off Barrow this fall evidently helped hunters pursue bowhead whales. But farther south, hunters wait for walrus and seals to follow the edge of the icepack, said Pungowiyi. When the ice is late, so are the animals.
And, of course, ice fishing is tough with no ice. Snowmachines and crab pots have been lost on thinner-than-usual shore ice off Nome in recent winters, Pungowiyi said.
In Wales, which sits behind an open beach, hunters also wait to launch their boats until slush forms on the ocean to hold down the surf.
"About a week ago we saw our first slush," Anungazuk said. "Usually it's in September."
* Reporter Tom Kizzia can be reached at tkizzia@adn.com
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