Wales

A city building in Little Diomede, Alaska, slid off its foundation, threatening the structural integrity of adjacent buildings and critical services, with the community seeking immediate assistance.

A polar bear that killed a young mother and her baby last month in western Alaska was likely an older animal in poor physical condition.

For isolated communities at the top of the world, keeping the planet’s largest land predators -- polar bears -- out of town is key to coexistence.

A Wales resident shot and killed the bear. With the loss of sea ice and the ocean staying open later in the year, polar bears have been spending more time on land, which increases the chance of human encounters.

After alerting the region to very high levels of harmful algal blooms west of Kotzebue and Gambell two weeks ago, scientist onboard the research vessel Norseman II have found even higher numbers of Alexandrium catenella algae cells near Wales, Diomede and Shishmaref.

John Ahkvaluk , 56, a polar bear guard revealed that this is not a good sign for the village. It’s the first time in several years that bears come at this time of the year. “It’s a warning that they got no food out there and they came looking for it here,” he said. After the incident, Luchie Manlangit, the school principal, and I invited John Ahkvaluk to talk to the kids and to share some protocols if polar bear will come around again.

March brought a series of storms across the Seward Peninsula, and in one Bering Strait community that meant a series of power outages. The storms are stronger than residents recall in the past.

A few years ago, people had to cover up parts of the burial site that were becoming exposed.

Wales lost shorefast ice early in the season. Ice along the shore has been crushed and broken. This is a very unusual event for Wales as many of our hunters rely on great ice conditions for whale and other sea mammal catch for food.

The “thermal curtain” is another expression for “cold pool” that acts as a barrier to keep some species—pollock and Pacific cod, for example — from migrating across the eastern Bering Sea shelf and northward toward the Bering Strait. For the first time in 37 years of surveying the Bering Sea, we could not find the cold water barrier.

Spiders possibly wolf spiders of family (Lycosidae) numbering some 75 to 100 were seen on top of snow along Boulder Creek road and lagoon.

Recent storms and warm seas melted a vast stretch of ice in the Bering Sea, leaving some islands surrounded by water when they should be locked in ice.

Last week, social media across Western Alaska lit up as residents posted photos and videos of open water where, normally, there's ice.

Three of the walruses had low to moderate levels of saxitoxin, while the fourth one had high levels.

Weather patterns have changed so much in the past several years.

An assistant professor at the University of Alaska–Fairbanks suspects that changes seen in the auklet population on Little Diomede may be related to changes in climate.

No sea ice; hunters say it should not be like this today.

Hazy fourth of July...

White-winged crossbill

By this time of the year, we usually have 2-3 miles of shore-fast ice that sticks to our beach. We as a village have not done our winter harvest of seals and walrus, and we are worried that we will not be able to bowhead whale hunt.