Green Options

Up to 200 walrus carcasses - mostly calves - have been spotted on the shore of Chukchi Sea on Alaska’s northwest coast.

While on their way to a walrus tagging project, federal wildlife researchers discovered nearly 200 dead walruses about 140 miles southwest of Barrow, on Icy Cape.

Although the age and cause of death is not officially known, the walruses appear to be mainly new calves or yearlings, according to early reports.

Images that were kept secret under President Bush have just been declassified by the Obama administration. These images reveal what scientists have predicted: “In recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months.”

Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea between Wainwright and Barrow.
No one in the area can recall seeing anything like it before.

This huge thing is not oil. One coast guard official said the following:

“It kind of has an odor; I can’t describe it.”

Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.

“It’s certainly biological,” Hasenauer said. “It’s definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.

“It’s definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it’s some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism.”