Walrus Stampedes Are Killing Alaska Calves; Artificial Rafts Could Help: Activist

POINT LAY, AK — There's a dearth of ice in the Chukchi Sea due to global warming and herds of Walruses are gathering in Russia and Alaska beaches, sometimes with 35,000 or more tightly packed shoulder to shoulder. When they become threatened by polar bears, hunters, airplanes or boats, calves can sometimes be crushed by mature females that weigh more than a ton.

A Sept. 11 survey near the Inupiaq Eskimo village of Point Lay found 64 dead walruses. Now environmental activist Rick Steiner wants to do something about it. He's urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to place anchored rafts in the ocean for the animals to rest upon.

Steiner, an environmental consultant and former University of Alaska marine conservation professor, proposed the idea two years ago, but the federal agency said it didn't have the money or manpower to give the animals artificial resting platforms. The platforms might give a few walruses some relief, but they wouldn't benefit the entire population, the agency also concluded. (For more information on walrus deaths and other Alaksa stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Steiner said he's again calling on the agency to lead a raft pilot project as sea ice continues to disappear.

"If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work," Steiner said Friday. "We know what doesn't work: sitting around in office looking at computer screens and having teleconferences expressing concerns about this."

The raft suggestion was thoroughly reviewed in 2015 and the federal agency's position has not changed, Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Andrea Medeiros said.

Walruses dive hundreds of feet to eat clams and other mollusks on the ocean floor, but they cannot swim indefinitely. Historically, sea ice has provided a platform for female walruses and their young to rest, nurse and dive north of the Bering Strait.

In recent decades, however, sea ice has diminished due to global warming. The ice in late summer has receded far beyond the shallow continental shelf, over water more than 10,000 feet deep — too deep for walruses to reach the ocean bottom.

Instead of staying on sea ice over deep water, walruses have gathered in Russia and Alaska, with 35,000 or more animals sometimes packed shoulder to shoulder on a beach. If a herd is spooked by a polar bear, hunter, airplane or boat, calves can be crushed by mature females weighing more than a ton.

A survey Sept. 11 near the Inupiaq Eskimo village of Point Lay found 64 dead walruses.

With the amount of carbon in the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, Steiner said, the loss of sea ice will continue. He proposes a pilot project of perhaps three rafts anchored a few miles off Point Lay and 80 miles offshore at Hanna Shoal, an important walrus feeding area.

Giant fuel barges are readily available for sale or lease that could be painted white to simulate large pan-ice floes, outfitted with artificial turf and lowered with seawater in their ballast tanks to a level where walruses could pull themselves up with their tusks, as they do with sea ice, Steiner said.

"The solution here is a little bit of biology, a little bit of naval architecture, and good old, standard tug-and-barge operation," he said.

Former Fish and Wildlife Service regional director Geoffrey Haskett said in his response to Steiner in 2015 that the agency's two major management concerns were disturbances to walruses on shore and stress placed on them by having to swim greater distances from the coast to feeding areas.

The agency and Point Lay residents have combined to discourage flights and hunters near herds that could cause stampedes. Steiner called the effort heroic but "simply not enough."

By DAN JOLING, Associated Press

Photo credit: Joel Garlich-Miller/U.S. Fish and Wildlife via AP