Father's Day in Barrow

At $18 a head we decided to skip the Father's Day breakfast at the cafe. Scott and I had almonds, dried fruit, and a granola bar. The boys ate canned fish out of styrofoam coffee cups. Good thing we weren't going after polar bears - their breath would have attracted them from a mile away!













Spent our last day in Barrow birding so the kids could see Spectacled Eiders. At the zoo this has always been one of their favorites - a goofy looking duck with a green hood over top of its head. Sadly they are threatened with extinction (in the wild) in the next 20 or so years. A combination of climate change and hunting of the ducks and their eggs. The boys did get to see them, plus the even odder looking King Eider.


Dave saw lemming tunnels and caught one by hand to the boys delight.












Jill helped us appreciate the arctic flowers that emerged and developed almost over night. The tundra where we found them had been covered in ice just a day or two before. I guess when you don't have much time you get right down to business!


































Pintail Duck (my only really good bird picture)










Ran into Denver (the Snowy Owl expert) on the tundra. The thing about birding is that other birders will always stop to see who you are and what you've found. He had a caribou hide strapped to the back of his ATV. A young Inupiaq boy killed it and gave him the hide as a gift. We all tried it out - very warm!











































There were sealed holes visible all over the inside of the skin. He told us that warble flies lay their eggs on the legs of caribou. The larva move through the body to the area of the spine and when they are ready to exit they cut holes in the caribou skin. I have a new respect and pity for caribou!













On our last drive back to NARL ( - believe it or not I miss riding in the back of that pickup in the arctic air! - ) we stopped to check out some whaling boats (one complete, one just the frame). The frame is hardwood (not sure where they got the wood traditionally since the tundra has no trees) and is covered by Bearded Seal skin from the spring hunt. Boy did that skin smell!




































































Dave found some baleen nearby. Bowheads are baleen whales. This means they don't have teeth. Instead they have baleen which runs between the upper and lower jaws filtering zooplankton out of the water. The baleen can be as tall as 13 feet!

It astounds me that an animal so large can feed on something so tiny. It made me think about the Gulf oil leak. So much attention goes to the victims that are easily visible and recognizable - the large mammals and birds. What mot people don't realize is the importance of the microscopic world at the base of the food web. I can't even imagine how the leak is affecting the base and what the long term consequences will be.























Picture of most of a whale skull -














Ate one last meal at Pepe's North of the Border. Never did get to do the polar bear plunge. The water along the shore was still frozen to a depth of at least 6 feet. The only water we could have plunged into was effluent from the sewage plant. No thanks! I was not disappointed, but the boys were.

Took an hour or so flight back to Fairbanks. Despite the casual appearance of the airport (park your truck right in front, anybody can walk right in) they took security seriously going through every inch of every bag taken on the plane. Maybe they are looking for illegally hunted or purchased animal products as well.

On the plane met Benjamin, a 7th grade Inupiaq boy from Barrow Middle School. He was headed to Boy Scout camp in Fairbanks. Sitting next to Scott he told him about going on a whale hunt (a successful one) this spring, and having successfully hunted polar bear and caribou. Elliot yelled across the aisle to ask if he was a football fan. He likes the Steelers. I have his science teacher's email and am hoping maybe we could do a joint project of some sort next year. Would be neat to "meet" Benjiman again in this way.

An uneventful arrival in Fairbanks, but interestingly we all immediately noticed the smell of trees when we passed through the airport doors. Hadn't noticed them before, but I guess being somewhere with no trees whatsoever makes you more sensitive to their scents.




















I miss Barrow already. I hadn't expected it to take hold of me like it did. It's not beautiful to the eye in the way of Denali or Matanuska, but it has a peacefulness that is beautiful in its own right. Whether its the isolation or something else, it gets to your soul.

BASC, Birds, and Bears

Jill, Dave, Elliot, and I were the Science Saturday speakers this week at BASC. They didn't know what kind of turnout to expect because the weather was beautiful (blue sky, above freezing) and that would keep people away. Had about 15 people there but not the crowd we expected. We were told it would mostly be parents from town, but I suppose they were out enjoying the day with their kids. Instead our crowd was some scientists, the North Slope Borough school superintendent, Barrow's only judge, a teacher, and a handful of others. Really it was the people we wanted to be talking too - those who might want to collaborate with us on some science education projects. One of the scientists, Denver Holt, is the world's expert on Snowy Owls. I mentioned during the presentation that one of my classes studied the effect of the presence of a Great Horned Owl on the behavior of birds at our feeders. Denver was really interested in the fact that 6th graders were doing experiments like this. He's going to send me his paper on a similar experiment he did with the idea that maybe my students could model his work. A great contact to have!

In the evening (if there is such a thing here) we took a tour out to Point Barrow - the most northern point in North America. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas converge here. It is in this area where the Inupiaq from Barrow leave the whale carcasses so polar bears will come here and not into town. We went looking for polar bears but found only prints and fur. We did see spotted seals on the ice (and scientists on the ice studying ice melt).

Nathaniel, the van driver, is an Inupiaq who's family has a long history here. He is the co-captain of his whaling boat. They took a whale last year and are still eating from it. They eat it about 3x per week. It is frozen raw and eaten that way. They hunt Bowhead but sometimes mistakenly catch a Right Whale which look very similar. The difference is that crustaceans grow on the skin of Right Whales but not Bowheads - you don't want to eat skin with parasites. Nathaniel says a hunt lasts about 2 - 3 weeks. Hunters sleep in tents they pitch on the sea ice.

Whale Carcass














Scott, Dave, and Nathaniel














Dipping Fingers in (and standing on) the Arctic Ocean at Point Barrow




































Polar Bear Fur and Prints































Elliot's Seal Rib














Michael by the Beaufort Sea




















Around midnight Dave, Jill, Scott, and I went out birding again on a tip from some Norwegian birders staying at NARL. The rare Ruff was spotted in the tundra - an important "life bird", along with Spectacled Eiders. Scott spotted the Ruff - a male putting on full display which is quite a show! We also saw Spectacled and King Eiders and another Snowy Owl. Back to NARL around 1 AM and it still looked like midday. A little boy - no more than 6 - was pushing his bike down the gravel road by the sea as we drove home.



Birding at Midnight

Barrow, Alaska 71.30 N

Arrived in the land of the midnight sun. What a strange experience - no matter what the hour it feels like it's mid afternoon. The land is flat and treeless - views of tundra or icy Arctic Ocean (the Chukchi Sea). It has a stark beauty.















The airport was an interesting experience - one room serves as the only gate plus baggage claim. The place was wall to wall people, not because the flight was crowded but because locals have supplies shipped in so whole families were there to pick up everything from toilet paper, to dog food, to dogs!

Picked up our rental truck - a 6 seater pickup (for 7 of us) with a broken windshield. The boys were anxious to get their turn to ride in the back, despite 34º temps. and gusty winds. They loved it!

We're staying at the NARL hotel where the word hotel has the loosest interpretation possible. It's a dorm for scientists doing research facilitated by BASC (Barrow Arctic Science Consortium). Of course the first scientist I meet in the hotel is not only from Ohio, not only from UC, but is someone I met several years ago when I contacted him to put together a weather workshop for teachers. It's an odd feeling to turn a corner in Barrow, Alaska and see a face that gives you that "I think I know you" feeling.

















Started our first full day with birding. Jenny, Scott, Elliot, and Michael enjoyed bouncing over dirt roads in the bed of the truck. Saw 20 or 30 species including Snowy Owls, Red Phalaropes, Yellow-billed Loons, and the grand prize, the endangered Steller's Eider. Dave and Michael both did happy dances when we got this one. It is a big life bird. Michael and Elliot are happy to be getting an early start getting life birds!

































Back at BASC we meet with 2 scientists doing arctic research. I won't even say where both are from but it starts and ends with O and has hi in the middle. Imagine that. The first guy, Noah Ashley, is researching circadian rhythms in birds (Lapland Longspurs I think). Some species maintain a 24 hour rhythm during the dark winters/ light summers while others do not. Noah is trying to find out what environmental cues are used by birds who maintain the 24 hour rhythm. So far he's tested light intensity and color temperatures but birds did not entrain to either of these in the lab.

George Divoky is a real charachter with wild hair and a personality to match. George documents climate change by studying seabirds. He helped a Black Guillemot population get established on Cooper Island in the Chukchi Sea. A few nesting pair were living in crates left behind by the Navy, so George added more nest boxes to increase the population size sufficiently to use it for study. In the 40 or so years that birds have been there a lot has changed - due to climate change, specifically ocean ice melting earlier and reforming later in the summer.
Guillemot's were first able to inhabit Cooper Island in the 60's because the arctic summer had lengthened to 80 days - the amount of time they need to nest and raise young. With the warming climate, summer continued (continues - now 140 days!) to lengthen and in the 80s Horned Puffins moved up from the subarctic and began competing with guillemots for nest cavities. Puffins destroy the guillemots' eggs. By the mid 90s ice was melting earlier in the season and therefore retreating further from shore over the course of summer. Guillemots feed on cod which feed on zooplankton beneath the ice. A lack of ice means shifting to a new food source - subarctic fish that moved into the area and are much less nutritious. Brood reduction is the result with alpha chicks attacking beta chicks in competition for food. In addition to this stress, polar bears, unable to reach the ice in late summer (which they need as they hunt for seal) started visiting the island in 2002. They flip nests and eat the birds though they get few calories from them. In 2009 180 chicks hatched. 89 were killed by puffins. 90 killed by polar bears. One survived. In George's words the situation on the island is "chaos... [it] teaches me about climate change in a way that's visceral". He tried to describe how it feels to have so much invested in this research (including emotionally) and then "any interesting story ends with 'and the bear comes along and eats them' ". Hopefully his own story won't end that way as it has become quite dangerous on the island.

George was very generous to spend so much time with us. He is quite the busy and fascinating guy. There is an article and future book about his work, "George Divoky's Planet". He's been on Letterman and the BBC is coming to film his work next week. Despite this he is very happy to work with our bird education collaborative to bring his experiment to Seven Hills. We'll be in touch with him to work on the specifics but we may have students tracking different birds' and their fates on Cooper Island. He's also willing to skype (when off the island) and visit the school as he has friends in Cinti anyway. How cool is that!

Our last meeting of the day was with Glen Sheehan, BASC's director then it was dinner at the famous Pepe's restaurant where our waiter Joe (who looks exactly like Smeagol from Lord of the Rings) kept us ... umm.. entertained. On the way to Pepe's we saw some of the Inupiaq men driving truckloads of bowhead whale meat to be processed. The annual whale hunt occurs each spring. Each Inupiaq family is allowed one whale which can be used by the family but not sold. Another interesting climate change connection - the Inupiaq are needing larger whaling boats because the swells that come in are now larger due to the changes in sea ice.


-- Inupiaq whaling boat.

Denali National Park

Took the shuttle bus to the Eileson Visitor Center in Denali today. Private cars can only drive in the 1st 15 miles. Beyond that you have to take a shuttle bus or hike in. The weather was clear and we were fortunate to be able to see Denali (Mt. McKinley) clearly almost the whole time. Most visitors to the park do not as it is usually hidden in clouds. Even when it is clear in the rest of the park, Denali is so tall and massive it generates its own weather. The entire ride (8 hours of it!) was spectacular. Sometimes the colors of the mountains were muted tans, greens, and reds, other mountains were stark black and snow white against the bold blue sky. Words that come to mind are majestic, endless, intense, alive.
In addition to the mountains we saw 4 Grizzlies, a herd of Barren Ground Caribou, lots of Dall Sheep (the park was created to protect these), Golden Eagles, a Gyre Falcon (thanks to a birder on our bus), Snowshoe Hares and the most precocious Ground Squirrels.
























I think I am being stalked! Once again, Ohioans are following me. The girl behind me on the bus is from the Cincinnati area AND is a former student of Jill Russell's - one of the professors we are here to travel with. What are the chances of that???

Teacher Talk: Denali is 56 million years old, 20,320 feet high, and still growing at a rate of about 1mm per year. It is made of granite (formed after molten magma solidfied underground) which resists erosion much better than the shale, limestone, and sandstone that make up many of the other mountains in the Alaska range. The mountain range is forming as the Pacific Plate continues to collide with the North American Plate (a convergent oceanic-continental boundary moving at about 5 cm per year), causing folds in the North American plate. Denali is Athabascan for "great one".

The trees in Denali - in fact, throughout Alaska - are smaller than I expected. I was expecting enormous conifers such as those in the Pacific northwest. They are small due to the short growing season and to permafrost - permanently frozen soil that is not far from the surface. Because tree roots can't penetrate deeply, their growth is stunted. Our shuttle driver told us about a tree that was downed and was only about 12" in diameter. Scientists were unable to see any growth rings until they took it to a lab, dyed it, and viewed it with a hand lens. The tree was just under 500 years old!

Denali is full of "braided rivers" that are glacially fed. They look like really large rivers that have dried up and left behind a mostly empty riverbed. Braided rivers form when meltwater flows off a glacier and gradually deposits its sediments. When enough are deposited in one area it changes the path of the water and a new channel is formed. This is repeated over and over, hence the braided appearance.