A WWF-led research team, a Canon photographer, and crew traveled to Siberia’s Arctic coast on the Laptev Sea, to help solve a scientific mystery. The Laptev Linkages expedition was sponsored by Canon.
I must say, we have really succeeded in our goal for the Laptev Canon-WWF Expedition: collecting DNA samples from walruses in this remote area. Now, we can work on settling a debate that’s over 50 years old – Where do the Laptev Sea walruses fit in the big story?
These big smelly creatures live in between the Atlantic and Pacific walrus populations, and they have access to open waters in the winter. So the walruses living in the Laptev Sea might be a separate subspecies. Genetic analyses from old bones refer these guys to the Pacific population, but there are some uncertainties.
Our main goal on this voyage was to collect DNA samples from the Laptev walruses for analysis. After days of crawling carefully up to walrus herds, culminating in a five-hour, all night sampling marathon, we reached the magic number: 32 small samples of walrus hide. The walrus DNA samples are now in safe in a lab in Moscow, ready for analysis. We hope to have an answer early next year, through the collaboration of walrus scientists in many different countries.
Some interesting observations from the trip:
