chukchi sea

Finally – a banner morning: clear, nearly calm, and should reach +5F by this afternoon. The team was joined by a second small helicopter late last night that will act as a spotter and may also haul extra fuel later in the season when the sea ice become too broken for the fixed wing to land. We meet at 8 AM for our briefing and plan to launch around half past ten. We will also have our fixed wing spotter/fuel plane today, so pilot coordination will be important.

Karyn, Michelle and I ready the gear and load up the helicopter. We’ll head northwest today and cover some new habitat to the southwest of Point Hope. The village of Point Hope is one of the oldest Inupiat sites in Alaska and is still a largely traditional village to this day. As such they live close to the land and the sea, relying on wildlife for healthy and affordable protein- including fish, caribou, seals, whale, and polar bear. Spring however is the time where focus turns to one single and very important species- the Bowhead whale.

Fourteen years. It’s difficult to believe that this will be my fourteenth consecutive year conducting polar bear captures in Alaska. From my first fall capture season in 1998, I always assume that each season and year will be my last such opportunity. Why? Because so few people have the opportunity to work out on the frozen seas, and fewer yet with an animal as magnificent as the polar bear. It is both an opportunity and a real honour and one I do not take for granted – every flight, every day, every year.

As you might imagine, this sort of work entails some long days and a certain amount of stress on the crew. A key player in a successful field season, and actually the one who makes it all possible, is the pilot. To fly animal capture work for the US federal government, you have to be carded – which basically means meeting fairly high minimum flight hours, having prior low level flight experience, and passing a check flight. Our pilot in the Chukchi exceeds those requirements several times over and this is his third year on this project.

The morning breaks the same as the day before and, once again, it is hard to say which way the weather will go. We’ve had some fresh snow overnight and the temperature is hovering right at -16 C with a wind chill of about -23 C. Winter never completely leaves this far north region as they can see snow during every month of the year!

As will likely be a common scene from here on out, I awake to a snowy, foggy morning. As the sea ice starts to break up, more and more water opens up and that significantly adds moisture to the near shore environment. With the right temperature and dew point combination, fog doesn’t move in, it just happens.