Whale Hunters of the Warming Arctic

The spring hunt started promisingly last year for the village of Point Hope, on the Chukchi Sea in northern Alaska: crews harpooned two bowhead whales and pulled them onto the ice for butchering. But then the winds shifted. Out on the pack where the water opened up, the ice at the edge was what is called sikuliaq, too young and unreliable to bear a thirty-ton whale carcass. The hunters could do nothing but watch the shining black backs of bowheads, breathing calmly, almost close enough to touch.