Inupiat people from certain villages in Northwest Alaska were blessed with an unusual harvest of 70 beluga whales this summer, a bounty that had not been possible for more than a decade, according to Beluga Bounty — a story from the Arctic Sounder newspaper republished on Aug. 13 in the Anchorage Daily News.
The intelligent white whales had not been visiting the Kotzebue Sound area in large numbers since the 1990s, and biologists had experienced some difficulty counting the eastern Chukchi Sea stock of the species.
This situation changed for several villages along the northwest coast this summer, but it also raised some intriquing questions. As Tamar Ben-Yosef wrote in the Arctic Sounder:
Over the past 20 years, the Inupiat of the Northwest Arctic had come to terms with the fact that they might never be able to hunt beluga whales as they and their ancestors had in the past. …
And they could only speculate about what had happened to one of their main subsistence food sources, which in previous times would frequent local shores with the preciseness of a clock. No one really knows why the white whales stopped showing up in large numbers in the Kotzebue region.
Then in late July, another mystery swam to the shallow waters of the village of Kivalina: hundreds of beluga, mainly large males, coming from the north.
The surprise appearance of the belugas spread through the villages of Kivalina, Point Hope, Buckland, Kotzebue and Deering. Residents took to the beaches and harvested as many as 70 whales. And that sparked a local debate: Did they take too many?
Belugas swimming / NOAA
The story goes on to discuss the question in measured terms, careful to keep a grip on the essential role whaling plays in the subsistence villages of Native Alaska. Before non-Alaska whale lovers get upset about this report of people killing cetaceans, it’s important to keep the meaning of a whale harvest in perspective.
An estimated 50,000 to 60,000 belugas roam the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea near Alaska, roughly gathered in four separate stocks. The largest concentrates in summer in the Beaufort Sea, where Alaska and Canadian Natives harvested an average of 160 whales each summer in the early 2000s.
Other Alaska villages — including some villages in northwestern Alaska — harvest about 250 belugas ever year, mainly in the highly traditional villages along the shores of Norton Sound. Biologists believe this harvest can be sustained without harming the population.
Another important detail: these whales never mingle with the genetically isolated and slowly-declining beluga population in Cook Inlet near Anchorage, now proposed to be listed under the Endangered Species Act. A hunt of one or two whales per year has been suspended pending new population estimates.
Killing and then processing wild animals for food is common in Alaska, even by non-Natives who live in urban centers. Over the past decade, the harvest of the western Alaska belugas has become one of the world’s most remarkable examples of how scientists and indigenous people can work together to manage a wild food source.
The Alaska Beluga Whale Committee — comprising 25 Alaska Native villages or councils — has overseen the harvest for more than a decade, helping with research and population counts, giving access to biologists and providing samples of whale tissue. The group has merged modern ecological principles with traditional Native knowledge to create a sustainable source of nutritious, living protein for isolated people on the Arctic coast.
In 2002, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded the committee its “Environmental Hero” citation for its ecologically sound management.
I wrote a story about the beluga committee at work in 2003. First appearing in the Anchorage Daily News, the story captures the tone and goals of the group and offers a different perspective on what whaling means to Alaska Natives. Here it is:
Here’s a miracle meal. An excellent source of protein chock full of vitamins. Extra high in iron and other important minerals and laced with those omega-3 fatty acids that drive down cholesterol and boost overall health.
Even better, the people who eat it say it’s tasty and gives a spiritual boost. This is not some breakfast flakes fortified by a snappy slogan or microwave entree in a snazzy box.
It’s the Alaska beluga whale, an ancient source of food in more than 50 villages along the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean. And according to hunters, health officials and biologists meeting last week with the Alaska Beluga Whale Committee, a strip of half-dried backstrap dipped in whale oil, or a chunk of aged beluga skin with blubber, may be one of the soundest meals available to coastal Natives and their families.
“To me, it gets me more healthy,” said Allen Atchak Sr., a whaling captain from Stebbins who feeds his family of seven children lots of beluga meat and muktuk. “I don’t ever get sick. I don’t ever get bad colds. I think it’s medicine.”
“It’s always good to catch whales,” added Albert Simon, a beluga hunter from Hooper Bay. “That’s why not too much is wasted.”
Atchak, Simon and about 40 other hunters, scientists and visitors discussed the nutritional benefits and preparation of beluga whales during the group’s annual meeting last week at the Hotel Captain Cook in Anchorage. Hunters also shared harvest reports and observations from the past season and talked over research ideas for 2004.
About 65,000 whales live in four Alaska stocks in the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean, and Alaska Natives take 200 to 400 of them each year in hunts co-managed by the committee and the National Marine Fisheries Service under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. These whales are genetically separate from the 300 to 400 belugas listed as depleted in Cook Inlet near Anchorage.
With about $200,000 per year of federal funding, the committee has compiled 16 years of detailed harvest records, monitored and reduced struck-and-loss rates, sponsored aerial surveys and pioneering satellite tagging projects, and provided more than 900 tissue samples for genetic analysis by scientists at federal laboratories.
Beluga whales swimming near ice
Credit: Robyn Angliss-NMMLAs time passed, the committee developed a reputation for hard work and reliable data that probably headed off interference by the International Whaling Commission, said Kathy Frost, a former state marine mammal specialist who helped set up the group and still serves as its secretary.
Last year, the group won the national Environmental Hero Award from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“It’s you taking care of your own belugas,” Frost told the hunters during the meeting. “It’s not somebody else telling you what to do. You’re taking care of it yourselves, and you’re doing a good job.”
One theme this year was eating the whales and what the benefits are.
Enormous, said Dr. Jim Berner, director of community health with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium.
In recent years, scientists and Natives have questioned whether industrial contaminants and heavy metals that work through the global food chain and concentrate in tissues and muscles of marine mammals were making traditional foods like belugas too risky to eat.
As he has at other forums, Berner told the group emphatically that eating beluga whales and other subsistence foods offers incredible nutritional rewards. It is true that, like other marine animals, belugas have been found to build up mercury, Berner said. But they also have elevated levels of the mineral selenium and vitamin E that may help counteract mercury. Someone eating food harvested from the ocean off Alaska would be far better off than someone eating only processed food bought in the grocery store.
“This diet has sustained and benefited Alaska Natives and other people in the North for thousands of years, and we’re recommending it,” he told the hunters. “The benefits outweigh the risks considerably.”
Beluga meat is especially rich in iron because the animal is an efficient diver. Like that of seals, the blubber contains the sort of fat found to reduce heart disease and boost immune systems. The whales have minerals and fat-soluble vitamins.
“It’s hard to find a similar food that has all that in the diet,” he said later. Committee chairman Ross Schaeffer told the group that three days in Anchorage eating restaurant meals gets his system “messed up.”
“When I finally eat my Native food, it’s like my body is satisfied, on an even keel,” he said.
At one point, hunters divided into groups from various regions to write down how they prepare and process the whales. A group from Norton Sound described how every hunter would help butcher the whales, each providing food for up to 10 families at a time. The meat would be taken off in four sections, then cut into strips, hung and “half dried.”
Beluga mom with calf
Credit: Janice Waite, NMMLSome people liked to dip it in seal oil or whale oil, while others liked to fry it. Muktuk, or the skin with blubber attached, would be cut into pieces or frozen for later meals.
“I do it the modern way,” said Elim hunter Charlie Saccheus, a key member of the committee, bringing laughter from his group. “I get those two-gallon Ziploc bags with the zipper on top. I measure the muktuk the size of the bag and freeze it.”
But the whales do more than sustain the body. In a presentation titled “Native foods — more than just science,” Schaeffer said hunting, processing and then sharing beluga with families and elders can do things for a man’s spirit that may be hard to quantify with the scientific method.
“You treat every animal with utmost respect after the hunt,” he said. “When the butchering process began, you didn’t do it just any old way. You do it in a certain way. … When you got this food home, you were taught to eat this food with thankfulness.
“When I eat Native food, I always say something like ‘This is so good,’ and it is good. It is spiritual.”
He described an incident years ago in which hunters from different villages were arguing over who had rights to hunt the whales at a certain point along the coast. Elders warned no one should wrangle over the whales. Later, Schaeffer said, belugas became more scarce in the Kotzebue Sound area. Was there a lesson?
He remembered an elder he often visited: “I always enjoyed eating with him because he said, ‘Eskimo food always tastes good when you have good company.’ In my opinion, that really says it. This nikipaq, this Eskimo food, is a gift from our creator, and it must be shared.”
