Latest Bowhead Whale Stories

What do polar bears, hummingbirds, clams, bowhead whales and invasive plant species have to do with Earth science spacecraft orbiting overhead 24/7? Soon observations from NASA's Earth-observing satellites of our planet's climate will be brought to bear on understanding how different species and ecosystems respond to climate changes and developing tools to better manage wildlife and natural resources.NASA has joined with the U.S. Geological Survey, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and...

According to a study released on Tuesday, the world's smallest known whale population has dwindled to about 30 individuals, only eight of them females. The Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska once swarmed with tens of thousands of North Pacific right whales. However, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), hunting in the 19th century wiped out most of them, with up to 30,000 slaughtered in the 1840s alone. The Soviet Union's poaching during the 1960s claimed...

Bears changing habitat in response to sea ice conditionsA long-term study showing the changes in habitat associations of polar bears in response to sea ice conditions in the southern Beaufort Sea has implications for polar bear management in Alaska.Karyn Rode, a polar bear biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Anchorage, Alaska and one of the study's authors, says data collected between 1979 and 2005 show that polar bears in the region are occurring more frequently on land and...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The federal Minerals Management Service today gave the green light to Shell Oil's plan to drill exploratory wells in the ecologically rich waters of the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's northwest coast next summer. "We are very concerned because drilling for oil runs the risk of devastating spills in a sensitive marine ecosystem already stressed by dramatic climate change," said Marilyn Heiman, director of the Pew Environment Group's U.S. Arctic...

It wasn't that many years ago that the bowhead whale was written off as extinct in the waters around Greenland and especially in Disko Bay in northwest Greenland where University of Copenhagen has its Arctic Field Station.But now the situation has changed and adult bowhead whales, which can grow up to 18 meters long and weigh 100 tons, have returned to the bay. Probably because global warming has opened up the Northwest Passage, making it ice free at certain times of the year for the first...

A U.S. federal appeals court canceled a Royal Dutch Shell permit to drill for Alaskan oil, citing an agencies failure to conduct an environmental review. The court ruled that the U.S. Minerals Management Service failed to conduct a required environmental review before giving the company a permit to drill in the Sivulliq oil field about 16 miles off of northern Alaska, The New York Times reported Friday. The 1970 National Environmental Policy Act required the agency to take a hard look at the...

The polar bear has become an icon of global warming vulnerability, but a new study found an Arctic mammal that may be even more at risk to climate change: the narwhal.The narwhal, a whale with a long spiral tusk that inspired the myth of the unicorn, edged out the polar bear for the ranking of most potentially vulnerable in a climate change risk analysis of Arctic marine mammals.The study was published this week in the peer-reviewed journal Ecological Applications. Polar bears are considered...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Endangered humpback and fin whales swam hundreds of miles north of their usual habitat this summer in what environmentalists say is another sign of the effects of global warming and the shifting Arctic ecosystem.Humpbacks were spotted over the summer in the Beaufort Sea east of Barrow, the northernmost community in the United States, and last year in the Chukchi Sea, west of the Beaufort and north of the Bering Strait, said Robin Cacy, a spokeswoman for the federal...

By Michael Christie FRIGATE BAY, St. Kitts and Nevis (Reuters) - The United States said on Tuesday it would not be cutting any deals with Japan over Alaska's bowhead whale hunting quota as it prepares to host an international whaling group next year. U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service Director Bill Hogarth said Japan had threatened a "blow-up" over the aboriginal quota for Eskimos if Washington did not give some ground on Japan's demand that a 1986 moratorium against commercial...

By Daisuke WakabayashiBARROW, Alaska -- As mayor of Alaska's oil-rich North Slope Borough, Edward Itta understands that developing the region's energy resources can pay for better schools and much-needed infrastructure improvements.But Itta also sees how greed for oil money can break down local Inupiat Eskimo culture and traditions that date back thousands of years and lead to drug use and other ills found in a modern society.Having to walk a fine line to balance those two forces, the...