Arctic Wild

By Co-owner Michael Wald

I went for a walk this overcast and windless afternoon around the head of the bay near where we are

Wald boys catching crabs in Southeast Alaska

staying, 10 miles from the town of Haines in Southeast Alaska. On the way back home from the fresh water spring under the enormous Sitka Spruce, my 3-year old son was quiet long enough for my ears to catch a faint but familiar noise from down the inlet. There were no birds in sight but the sound of the Long-tailed Ducks instantly transported me to the arctic coast. Long-tailed ducks, formerly known by the apt and descriptive but derogatory name Old-squaw or the Inupiat onomatopoetic name Ahalik are small and hardy sea-ducks that breed across the arctic and winter from the Aleutians to Southeast Alaska.

We often see them on isolated lakes in the Brooks Range and they are nearly constant companions along the Beaufort Sea coast in the summer. I have spent many an arctic night around driftwood fires watching and listening to these black and white ducks feed and rest among the rotting summer sea-ice. We (Michael and Sally and our two boys) are spending January through March watching a friend’s homestead here in Haines, as a sort of trial run for where we would like to spend our “off-season” when we are not guiding and running Arctic Wild. After more than a decade (3 decades for Sally) living in Fairbanks year round, I wondered if I would miss the deep dry cold, the proximity to the endless wilderness of the Interior and Brooks Range, or our wonderful

Long-tailed Duck

community of friends, many of whom are involved with Arctic Wild. I have also been feeling sheepish about fleeing the cold rather than enjoying the winters charms. In contrast many have suggested that if we are going to run from the cold we should go a whole lot further than Southeast Alaska (Mexico or Hawaii). But today standing on the beach hearing the long-tailed ducks calling “ahalik ahalik”, I thought that maybe they and we have found some ideal winter habitat. I don’t really want to be the cliché snow birds, but following the sea ducks’ example might be a wonderful life for our family. We miss our friends in Fairbanks but I am loving spending time on the water paddling and fishing, and skiing among the big trees of Southeast Alaska is a treat. Winter is speeding by;  we know that we will head north to the arctic just as soon as the ducks tell us it is time to go.

By Dan Ritzman, Arctic Wild guide and Alaska Program Director for the Sierra Club .

Beluga whales are an emblem of the arctic seas. Big males can reach 16 feet in length and nearly 4,000 pounds. The are supremely ice adapted regularly feed and travel in seas which are 90% covered in sea ice. Belugas are circumpolar in the northern hemisphere where they live in groups from 2  to several thousand individuals. During the summer they primarily feed at the edge of the continental shelf where upwelling presumably create a rich marine environment where arctic cod are abundant. Though many individuals from the Beaufort Sea feed in shallow waters near the Alaska/ Canadian border we rarely see them on our trips that go to the arctic coast.

Though off-shore drilling in the Beaufort Sea and proposed gas and oil projects in the Chukchi Sea could have delitory effects on Beluga populations, this edition of my conservation blog doesn’t focus on the Arctic but takes a look at Cook Inlet, and the local population of endangered Beluga Whales that ply these waters. Cook Inlet stretches 180 miles (290 km) from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage in south-central Alaska. Cook Inlet branches into the Knik Arm and Turnagain Arm at its northern end, almost surrounding Anchorage.
Like the legendary Moby Dick, the full-grown beluga whale is snowy white. Yet unlike Herman Melville’s mostly fictitious albino sperm whale, which had only Captain Ahab to deal with, the beluga swims in an ocean chock-full of dangers such as pollution, oil drilling, and global warming. The isolated Cook Inlet beluga whale population must also contend with the increasingly perilous and industrialized waters near Anchorage, Alaska’s fastest-growing city.
Recently the Obama Administration proposed designating over 3,000 square mile of Cook Inlet as critical habitat for the Beluga. These whales are already on the brink of extinction and are now facing multiple new threats.  One of the most pressing comes from the proposed Chuitna Coal Strip Mine, just 45 miles west of Anchorage, Alaska. The strip mine would decimate a salmon stream that is part of the Cook Inlet and supplies a portion of the Beluga’s primary food source.

You can help protect the habitat of the Cook Inlet Beluga by going to the Sierra Club’s take action page: