Walruses surprise residents of Alaska village

ANCHORAGE: Residents of a village of 110 on the Alaska Peninsula see the occasional walrus in Bering Sea waters, but when 200 packed a beach just outside the community, it took them by surprise.

Port Heiden’s Tribal Council President John Christensen Jr was on a beach ride with four-wheelers on April 7 when he smelled something foul, he said on Wednesday.

He followed his nose for a couple of miles and was startled to see a beach crowded with walruses.

Two weeks later, Christensen saw over a thousand walruses gathered about 32km outside the village.

Joel Garlich-Miller, a US Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, is not sure why they are gathering on the Alaska Peninsula, the land mass that juts from mainland Alaska toward the Aleutian Islands, but it may be related to food availability.

Male and female walruses spend winters in the Bering Sea but separate when ice recedes with warmer temperatures.

Females and their calves ride the sea ice north all the way through the Bering Strait into the Chukchi Sea, using ice as a platform to dive for clams and other mollusks, and rest.

Male walruses usually spend summers in the Bering Sea, often on islands or remote locations in Bristol Bay roughly 209km north of Port Heiden, Garlich-Miller said.

In the late 1980s, as many as 10,000 walruses would gather on Round Island, part of a state wildlife sanctuary. But in recent years, only 2,000 to 3,000 have shown up.

That could be an effect of sea ice not forming as far south as in past years and male walruses spending more time in the northern Bering Sea, he said. — AP