Circumpolar Climate Events - October 2013

Arviat, NU, Canada. October 2, 2013 (polar bears) Polar Bear encounters are becoming a common occurrence in some Nunavut communities, especially this time of year. In Arviat the bears have been around the community all year but have caused some recent grief by killing domesticated dogs.
Just a few days ago, a polar bear mauled and killed a Siberian husky dog used for a dog team.

"I was so disappointed," Hattie Alagalak said in Inuktitut, when her grandson lost one of his dogs. "I did tell him if he saw it to shoot it but he didn't see the bear so I'm sure it'll kill again."

Although the Hamlet of Arviat runs a patrol program, people are still advised to stay cautious. It is not known how many dogs have been attacked or killed recently by polar bears.

CBC

Point Lay, October 2, 2013 (walrus) An estimated 10,000 walrus unable to find sea ice over shallow Arctic Ocean water have come ashore on Alaska's northwest coast.

Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Friday photographed walrus packed onto a beach on a barrier island near Point Lay, an Inupiat Eskimo village 300 miles southwest of Barrow and 700 miles northwest of Anchorage.

The walrus have been coming to shore since mid-September. The large herd was spotted during NOAA's annual arctic marine mammal aerial survey, an effort conducted with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the agency that conducts offshore lease sales.

An estimated 2,000 to 4,000 walrus were photographed at the site Sept. 12. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency that manages walrus, immediately took steps to prevent a stampede among the animals packed shoulder to shoulder on the rocky coastline. The agency works with villages to keep people and airplanes a safe distance from herds.

Young animals are especially vulnerable to stampedes triggered by a polar bear, a human hunter or a low-flying airplane. The carcasses of more than 130 mostly young walruses were counted after a stampede in September 2009 at Alaska's Icy Cape.

The gathering of walrus on shore is a phenomenon that has accompanied the loss of summer sea ice as the climate has warmed.

Pacific walrus spend winters in the Bering Sea. Females give birth on sea ice and use ice as a diving platform to reach snails, clams and worms on the shallow continental shelf.

As temperatures warm in summer, the edge of the sea ice recedes north. Females and their young ride the edge of the sea ice into the Chukchi Sea. However, in recent years, sea ice has receded north beyond continental shelf waters and into Arctic Ocean water 10,000 feet deep or more where walrus cannot dive to the bottom.

Walrus in large numbers were first spotted on the U.S. side of the Chukchi Sea in 2007. They returned in 2009, and in 2011, scientists estimated 30,000 walruses along one kilometer of beach near Point Lay.

Remnant ice kept walrus offshore in 2008 and again last year.

The goal of the marine mammals survey is to record the abundance of bowhead, gray, minke, fin and beluga whales plus other marine mammals in areas of potential oil and natural gas development, said NOAA Fisheries marine mammal scientist Megan Ferguson in an announcement.

"In addition to photographing the walrus haulout area, NOAA scientists documented more bowhead whales, including calves and feeding adults in the Beaufort Sea this summer compared to 2012," said Ferguson. "We are also seeing more gray whale calves in the Chukchi Sea than we have in recent years."

Environmental groups say the loss of sea ice due to climate warming is harming marine mammals and oil and gas development would add to their stress.

Anchorage Daily News

Homer, Alaska, October 6, 2013 (algae) A brown sludgy algal bloom up to three feet in depth is discoloring waters in the Kachemak Bay and smaller bays in the area. The algae is know to be in the family of Gymnodinium but the species is unknown. The bloom is raising concerns about food safety and impacts on shellfish including commercial operations. Algal blooms have also recently been observed in the area including July 2013 (see LEO Network map) and in September 2012, the bay waters were discolored by a spruce rust event (see September 2012 Circumpolar Climate Events Map.) The Kasitsna Bay Laboratory in Jakolof Bay are in the process of investigating the bloom.

 

Read: Alaska Dispatch

Vancouver BC, Canada, October 7, 2013 (marine invertebrates) Last month, a diver alerted Vancouver Aquarium staff that he had found a number of dead and decaying sunflower sea stars in the cold Pacific waters of a popular dive spot just off the shore of West Vancouver.

Within weeks, the tentacled orange sea stars had all but disappeared in Howe Sound and Vancouver Harbour, disintegrating where they sat on the ocean floor.

And aquarium staff don't know just how far-reaching the "alarming" epidemic has been, and whether this and other sea star species will recover.

"They're gone. It's amazing," said Donna Gibbs, a research diver and taxonomist on the aquarium's Howe Sound Research and Conservation group.

"Whatever hit them, it was::text like wildfire and just wiped them out."

The sunflower sea star population had inexplicably exploded in recent years. In some areas they were stacked several stars deep, and those conditions may have been ripe for disease, she said.

The aquarium has dubbed the epidemic Sea Star Wasting Syndrome.

Aquarium staff don't know the cause because they have had trouble gathering specimens for testing, as starfish that looked healthy in the ocean turned up as goo at the lab.

The epidemic has killed thousands of the marine invertebrates, which can weigh up to five kilograms and live up to 35 years.

The Howe Sound research team have heard from veterinarians and other marine experts that similar die-offs have taken place in Florida and California.

"We're just not sure yet if it's all the same thing," Gibbs said. "They're dying so fast."

Read more; Vancouver Sun

Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, Canada, October 9, 2013. (bears) While polar bears continue to present a constant threat to communities in Nunavut’s Kitikmeot region, grizzly bears are now becoming more of a nuisance too.

That’s one of the issues raised at the Kitikmeot Regional Wildlife Management Board’s annual general meeting, held this past week in Cambridge Bay.

“It’s coming from different communities. The increase of wolves and grizzly bears coming into the communities, and more frequently in Cambridge Bay,” said James Panioyak, vice-chairman of the KRWMB and president of the Ekaluktutiak Hunter’s and Trapper’s Organization.

“Gjoa Haven also expressed that concern and Kugluktuk as well. It’s more of a concern now because here in Cambridge Bay we had grizzly bears come right into the community,” Panioyak said.

Last August a grizzly bear attracted attention when it it tried to swim to Cambridge Bay.

“Someone thought it was marine wildlife, but in fact it was a grizzly bear swimming across the bay [to] approach the community,” Panioyak said.

“A couple of hunters took it out of safety concerns, redirected it. Got it across the bay knowing they had to put it down because it had come to the community and more likely it will come back.”

These sightings are becoming more common over the past five years on Victoria Island, Panioyak said.

The bears are denning on the island, he says, which means, “it’s becoming their territory, where it breeds as well.”

And this has affected caribou and muskox populations, said the manager of the Gjoa Haven Hunters and Trappers Organization, Willy Aglukkaq.

“According to Inuit testimony, that’s what’s happening. We have a lot of Inuit hunters that are out on caribou hunts. It used to be rare that people would shoot grizzly bears. Now it’s just a common occurrence,” Aglukkaq said.

Aglukkaq said that about five documented kills have occurred this year.

But the main concern is over grizzly bears getting into communities, and now people feel threatened when going out on the land, he said.

Panioyak said the KWMB is in the process of making a submission to Nunavut’s Department of Environment.

Aglukkaq said grizzly bears were rare in Gjoa Haven a decade ago — but not now.

“I’ve done aerial surveys in the past. We’ve counted up to eight grizzly bears running around by our cabin grounds,” Aglukkaq said.

Although two polar bears wandered into Gjoa Haven last year, the closest grizzly that has come near the hamlet this year has been 10 miles away, he said.

Gjoa Haven does not have any strict regulations for hunting grizzly bears, Aglukkaq said, but he is worried that stricter regulation may come, such as those now in place in the Northwest Territories.

“We’re concerned about our caribou populations, because in the NWT, all their regulations [are] put into place. We just don’t want that to happen here,” Aglukkaq said.

A 2012 Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife report estimated there are 1,500 to 2,000 grizzly bears in Nunavut.

The report said the grizzly population in Nunavut, the NWT and Northern Manitoba, is “expanding.”

That estimate is up from a 2009 COSEWIC assessment that said there were 800 grizzlies in the Kitikmeot and 200 in the Kivalliq region.

Beneficiaries on the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement do not need a license or permit to hunt grizzly bears, unless an HTO has imposed a restriction on harvest.

But “undocumented killing remains an important problem for managers,” the report said.

The COSEWIC has assessed the grizzly bear as a species of “special concern.”

But their general status has not been assessed by the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, said the 2012 report.

Aglukkaq and Panioyak also said the wolf population is “booming” and is another big issue in the Western Arctic.

“There was a pack of wolves spotted about seven miles outside the community. And there was::text like 30 to 35 wolves,” Aglukkaq said, adding that he would never see that many wolves in the area a decade ago.

Nunaatsiaq Online