Aleutians

Since September, the University of Alaska Anchorage has been offering regular Unangam Tunuu classes, and it’s the first time in over twenty years that the language classes have been taught at the university level.

At the helm of the course is Haliehana Alaĝum Ayagaa Stepetin, an Unangax̂ artist, scholar and subsistence fisher from Achan-Ingiiga, or Akutan. For the last nine years, she’s been studying the language, which is native to the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands region, with her mentor and Unangam Tunuu expert Moses Qagidax̂ Dirks. Together, the two are co-teaching these classes.

In the beginner course, Stepetin and Dirks cover the Unangax̂ alphabet, common greetings, kinship terms and personal introductions.

“Ting Alaĝum Ayagaa akuq,” Stepetin gives her introduction in Unangam Tunuu. “Qigiiĝum Unangaa akuq. Akutanam asxuu Achan-ingiigam ilagaan angix̂takuq. Qiigiĝum tanangin kugaan angix̂takuq. Iluulum tanadgusii ilan anĝaĝizaq. Dena’inam tanangin ilan anĝaĝinaq. Adang Thomas Stepetin asax̂tanax̂. Akutanam ilagaan angix̂tanax̂. Anang Annette Senger asax̂takux̂. Iluulum tanadgusii ilan anĝaĝizax̂ ama Wiyot tanangin kugaan angix̂takux̂.”

In her introduction, Stepetin gives a brief family history and explains where her parents are from — an exchange well known in the Native community. At the end of the 15-week course, her students will give a similar introduction in Unangam Tunuu as their final presentation.

Stepetin said this project was inspired by her experience traveling across Indigenous homelands and witnessing this exchange everywhere. She wanted to hear more Unangam Tunuu being spoken in the world, she said.

“I’m in a Native American Studies PhD program, so almost everyone is Native,” Stepetin said. “We all introduce ourselves, and I was like, ‘it would be really great if people were doing this, not just at the Aleut Villages Conferences, but everywhere that Unangax̂ people are in the world.’”

Sharing traditional introductions in a classroom setting has become more common in recent years, but the origin of the greetings dates back to nearly six decades ago, according to Stepetin.

“The history of these Alaska Native introductions started with the Alaska Native solidarity movements in the ’60s and ’70s,” she said.

This period was one of the first times various tribes from around the state gathered in large numbers. After Alaska became a state in the late 1950s, there was an imminent threat of land loss for Indigenous peoples. This threat prompted the creation of the Alaska Federation of Natives, the largest Native organization in the state.

“And they didn’t know who they were,” Stepetin said. “And so they would say, ‘I’m so-and-so, my mom and my dad are so-and-so, and we’re from here.’”

Outlining familial ties through introductions is important among Native people because it’s a way to relate to each other, she said.

“And because a bunch of people at the time had known each other, especially through being removed to boarding schools or different residential schools,” she said. “They would be like ‘oh, yeah, I know your mom,’ or, ‘I know your dad. I’ve heard of that village. So-and-so, who I went to school with is from there.’”

This course — and the collaboration among Stepetin, Dirks and supporting organizations like the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association — marks a big step toward Unangax̂ language revitalization.

The course culminated in a presentation where students were able to introduce family members, describe their favorite hobbies and talk about geographic roots — all in Unangam Tunuu. Stepetin said that all 23 students from the fall semester successfully completed this final project.

Stepetin hopes to teach level two Unangam Tunuu in the future. That course would likely cover conversations relevant to life on Unangam Tanangin — or Unangax̂ lands — such as weather and subsistence.

Ravn Alaska has partnered with the Food Bank of Alaska to help provide meals to elders on St. Paul Island.

Andronik Hanson is the food bank coordinator for the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island — the local tribal government. He said shipping costs for food can get expensive on an island in the middle of the Bering Sea.

“The big thing they’re doing is donating freight to get the boxes,” Hanson said.

Ravn covers the freight costs for about 18-25 boxes of food per month, which has totaled more than 1,400 pounds since the program started in November, according to a Ravn press release.

The monthly deliveries are part of an effort to combat food insecurity in the region, said Rob McKinney, chief executive of the regional airline.

“We’re the primary carrier that serves that island,” McKinney said. “So we feel like we have a special obligation to make sure that we take care of that community.”

Ravn has covered freight costs for more than 600 meals to the island over the past few months.

McKinney said the deliveries to St. Paul will continue monthly and are the beginning of a larger project.

“Once we know what the needs are and what our capabilities are, we definitely want to look at other communities where we can expand that partnership,” he said.

The company is looking to add another De Havilland Dash 8 plane and increase its cargo capacity to supply more communities in rural Alaska with meals in the future, according to McKinney.

Josh Trosvig is the captain of the Cerulean, a 58-foot boat currently fishing for cod in the Bering Sea, about 80 miles northeast of Unalaska.

On a sunny day earlier this month, while he was waiting for the tide to change, he said he spotted something that looked like a large tote bobbing on the surface of the water, about 300 feet from his boat.

It turned out to be a group of whales.

But not just any whales.

“I’ve seen a lot of whales — thousands, tens of thousands in my 35 years of fishing out here,” Trosvig said. “But this was unique. I’ve never seen whales feed like that.”

Trosvig didn’t know it at the time, but the whales he was watching were North Pacific right whales. They’re critically endangered. And scientists say Trosvig is likely the first person to take photos and video of the whales feeding in the Bering Sea in the winter.

It took emailing between a few scientists until the whales were identified, because the sight is so unusual. Trosvig’s footage and other photos from fishermen prompted officials to call on fishing boats to exercise caution in the area.

Also, scientists say the images could help fill in some mysteries about the very small whale population.

“To my knowledge, this is the first sighting of North Pacific right whales in winter in the Bering Sea,” said NOAA Fisheries scientist Jessica Crance. “We have acoustic detections, or sound recordings, of whale calls during January, but no actual sightings from this time of year.”

Rolling along the water’s surface ‘like bulldozers‘

As Trosvig stood on his boat, looking out at the water, he said the whales moved almost “like bulldozers.”

They’d pop their heads up and roll along the water’s surface for minutes at a time — feeding behavior he’s never witnessed before.

At first, he said, he thought they might be bowhead whales feeding on marine invertebrates, based on their color and size. But he wasn’t sure. So he took out his phone and recorded them. Then he sent the video to an assistant area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor.

“I firmly believe that knowledge is power, especially when it comes to the oceans,” Trosvig said. “We know more about the universe outside our solar system than we do about the depths of our own ocean. And for proper fisheries management and ecological management of the ocean, it’s critical for all of us to work together.”

Asia Beder manages groundfish fisheries in the Bering Sea-Aleutian Islands region. When she got the video from Trosvig last Tuesday, she dug through her marine mammal identification books, trying to identify the dark whales with white bumps on their heads and jawlines called callosities.

But she said she wasn’t completely sure what species they were. So she forwarded the video to NOAA fisheries for help.

“The simple email of, ‘Can you ID this?’ which I’ve seen many times for fish and crab and other animals, turned into a big thing,” said Beder.

The video of the whales then made its way to Crance, who helped solve the mystery. She’s a Seattle-based research biologist with the Marine Mammal lab at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, part of NOAA Fisheries. She said she helped identify the whales in the video as North Pacific right whales.

Beder, in Unalaska, was shocked.

“I don’t know anything about right whales, to be honest,” she said. “I know they exist, and I knew the population was low. But I didn’t realize how low, and so these sightings are really important.”

Eastern stock whale population falls from thousands to about 30

Right whales are among the rarest of all marine mammal species and have never been documented in the Bering Sea in winter months. They’ve been listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act since 1970 and are depleted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

There are three different types of right whales: the North Atlantic, the Southern and the North Pacific. And the North Pacific right whales are split into two stocks: the eatern and the western.

“The western right whale is over in Japanese and Russian waters,” Crance said. “They number somewhere in the low hundreds, maybe 300 to 500 animals. The eastern stock is critically endangered.”

Scientists estimate there are only about 30 animals left in the eastern stock. That’s because the large baleen whales became the target of whaling in the 1800s. According to NOAA, the right whale got its name because it was the right whale to hunt — it moved slowly and would float after being killed.

“It’s estimated that anywhere between 25,000 and 35,000 animals were taken in just a few decades,” Crance said. “So that brought the population to maybe around the high hundreds of animals. But then in the 1960s, the Soviets began hunting right whales illegally and took over 700 additional whales. That decimated the population and brought it down to what we think are their current numbers of roughly 30 animals.”

Crance — who has been studying right whales for more than a decade — said the eastern stock feeds in the southeastern Bering Sea during the summer months. But because there are so few of them to track, it’s still unknown where they go the rest of the year.

“Prior to this, we assumed that they all migrated south, much like every other large whale population,” said Crance.

Because of Trosvig’s video, researchers are now thinking some of the whales may stay in the Bering Sea through the winter.

Crance said that because they know so little about the eastern stock — including even how long they live — every single sighting increases their knowledge considerably.

That knowledge helps them continue to monitor and study the right whale population, she said.

Tracking whales by the white bumps on their heads

NOAA has a catalog of whales they’ve seen before, with corresponding numbers or names, Crance said. And they’re able to track specific whales based on their callosities.

But Trosvig’s video and photos are too far away to confirm if they’ve seen the whales before.

“There’s no way to know if these are known individuals or are new to us,” Crance said.

There are a few known right whales that have been spotted in the Bering Sea in the past. But they were observed in the spring and summer.

For instance, Phoenix, a juvenile right whale, was spotted in the Bering Sea in 2017 — the first juvenile to be seen there in more than a dozen years. He was viewed as a sign of hope that the population might recover, said Crance.

Notchy was named for the notch on its flukes, and is the first and only North Pacific right whale to have been matched to both a high and low latitude area, according to Crance. Notchy was photographed in April of 1996 in Hawaii and, four months later, in the Bering Sea in Alaska. Notchy has made at least one migration, according to Crance, and is the only documented migration they have for this population.

Crance said Tuesday that NOAA hasn’t received any new images of the whales spotted by Trosvig in the past week or so.

But NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Coast Guard are urging boaters to be careful in the area of Unimak Pass so they don’t harm the whales if they’re still nearby. The area is a major transit zone for ships — not just in and out of Dutch Harbor, but also to the rest of the world.

“Because they’re so critically endangered, every animal is crucial to the health of this population,” said Crance.

Also, Crance said, she hopes fishermen will continue to document the whales when they see them and send photos and videos to Fish and Game or NOAA.

“Every sighting that we get helps put one more piece of the puzzle together to try and understand the migration and movement patterns of these animals,” she said.

Researchers looking into the decline of Steller sea lions over the last decade noticed that the concentration of mercury levels in lion pups was increasing in some parts of the Aleutian Islands — but they didn’t know why.

Now, a group of scientists from around the nation are working to solve that mystery with a research project called Aleutian Mercury Dynamics.

The project’s goal is to create a timeline to see mercury levels in the Aleutian Islands over the last few thousand years.

“We are looking at how mercury is present in the marine food web over thousands of years, to better understand implications for today,” said Caroline Funk, an archeologist from the University of Buffalo in New York.

Funk traveled to Unalaska in the summer of 2021 with another scientist from the project, Nicole Misarti from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Together, they collected tiny fragments of bone from Steller sea lions, northern fur seals and Pacific cod to bring to Fairbanks and scan for mercury.

The Museum of the Aleutians in Unalaska has the remains from midden sites — mounds of refuse from ancient villages — across the region, some dating back more than 4,000 years.

The bone fragments come from Unangax̂ villages across the Aleutian chain. This can be a culturally sensitive topic, so the researchers are working closely with the museum, as well as Unangax̂ tribes and corporations across the region.

Mercury can spike for natural reasons. Two prime causes are volcanic eruptions and the melting Arctic. When a volcano erupts, it releases mercury into the atmosphere. Additionally, permafrost stores mercury, so the element is released as the permafrost thaws.

But human activity can also release mercury into the atmosphere. Industrial activities, like burning fuel, release mercury as well.

The mercury research project aims to see if there were spikes in mercury across the region in pre-industrial times. That would help answer the question of whether this is solely a human-caused problem, or if it predates human activity.

“Is it coming from factories down south or in Asia that’s being blown over and dropping here?” Misarti said. “If we look 4,000 years in the past, and we have times…when there are spikes in mercury that are as much or bigger than the mercury we’re finding now, then we know this isn’t completely a human problem.”

Bones can be a window to the past. They can tell you what an animal was eating and where it was eating it. Misarti said they can extract reproductive hormones, stress hormones, and ancient DNA. And they can tell how much mercury was in the environment when the animal was alive.

After collecting tiny bits of bone fragments — about two grams of each animal — Funk and Misarti traveled to their lab in Fairbanks, where the team began analyzing the bones for mercury.

“It appears that we do have some changes through time over the last 4,000 years,” Misarti said. “From there, we’re looking at what those patterns might mean.”

They don’t have a lot of the answers they’re hoping to find yet. This is the beginning of a long, complicated process, and researchers expect to go through hundreds of samples over the next few years.

The nation’s sole heavy icebreaker arrived in Antarctica on Monday after a nearly three-month trip from Seattle.

The deployment marks the Polar Star’s 25th journey to the earth’s southernmost continent, supporting Operation Deep Freeze, an annual mission to resupply American scientists doing research near the South Pole, according to a Coast Guard statement.

Each year, the crew maneuvers the nearly 400-foot, 13,000-ton icebreaker to cut a channel to McMurdo Station, the U.S. Antarctic Program’s logistics hub. It carves through miles of ice, sometimes up to 21-feet thick.

This winter, the icebreaker’s 157 crew members spent four weeks breaking ice and grooming the shipping channel to the station, which was established on Ross Island in 1955.

The cleared route will enable two supply vessels to safely offload more than 8 million gallons of fuel and a thousand cargo containers. Together, the two ships carry enough fuel, food and critical supplies to sustain research operations throughout the year. Supply ships will return again during the next austral summer — the season in the Southern Hemisphere that runs from about November to February.

The mission marks the Polar Star’s first return to Antarctica since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Coast Guard statement.

Last winter, instead of going south, the 46-year-old icebreaker conducted an Arctic deployment, and stopped in the Port of Dutch Harbor for the first time since 2013.

It was the ship’s first winter Arctic deployment in nearly four decades.

The Polar Star patrolled Alaska’s Arctic waters, including the maritime boundary line separating the U.S. and Russia, to assert maritime sovereignty and security in the far north and train the next generation of polar sailors.

Last winter’s patrol was the farthest north any American ship has sailed in the winter months.

The Coast Guard has been the sole provider of the nation’s polar icebreaking capability since 1965, according to the statement. Commissioned in 1976, the Polar Star is the United States’ only heavy icebreaker. The Coast Guard is increasing its icebreaking fleet with construction of three new polar security cutters “to ensure persistent national presence and reliable access to the polar regions.”

The construction on the first new icebreaker is expected to be completed in 2024.

A collection of audio reels made in the Aleutian region in the 1970s was digitized and will soon be available online through the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The recordings were part of a school project that started in 1977 when a group of Unalaska students and their teacher Ray Hudson started collecting texts about the culture, language and history of the Aleutians. They called themselves the “Cuttlefish Class” – a name they picked out together – and they called their project the “Cuttlefish Series.”

The students put together six hefty volumes meant to bring the island community and Unangax̂ culture into the classroom. They contain things like fishing stories, letters, recipes for alodics, an Unangax̂ form of fry bread, as well as memories from Makushin and the other lost villages that were forcibly evacuated during World War II.

For the most part, the book series is based on knowledge provided by Unangax̂ elders from around the region – a lot of which was documented on reel-to-reel tape.

A total of 59 audio reels were saved from the project. On them are things like teachings from elder Bill Tcheripanoff in September of 1977, who was recorded talking to Unalaska students about an ulux̂tax̂, an Unangax̂ skin-on-frame sea kayak. There are clips of friends and families playing games in their homes, as well as lists of words translated into Unangam Tunuu.

The recordings were housed at the Unalaska City School District for about two decades. In 1997, the reels were given to the University of Alaska Fairbanks and sat there for about another 20 years. But in 2020, Leslie McCartney, an associate professor and curator of the oral history collection at UAF, got a grant and started digitizing them.

“We were able to send these recordings out to a company to have them digitized in a professional manner at a sampling rate much higher than what we could do,” McCartney said.

Part of her job is to look after the library’s oral history collection, which contains over 15,000 recordings “on all kinds of different media, from wire recordings to magnetic tape to digital to video, you name it,” McCartney said.

Another part of her job is to decide which media from the collection needs to be digitized and when.

After getting the grant from the National Recording Preservation Foundation, McCartney said she asked her staff what content they had that was endangered.

“What have we got that might fit the bill?” she asked them. “And one of my staff suggested the Cuttlefish tapes, and I said, ‘Okay, well, let’s take a look at that.’”

Even after about 40 years of sitting around, she said the tapes were in pretty good condition, but she didn’t want to risk digitizing them in-house.

A lot of the recordings in UAF’s oral history collection aren’t labeled. Most of the time, McCartney and her small team have to do a lot of detective work just to find out what the originals contain – and that’s before they can even begin to digitize them.

But the Cuttlefish recordings are unique, said McCartney. That’s because Hudson – who has written extensively about Aleutian history and taught the Cuttlefish Class – still remembered many details about the recordings. So even though there wasn’t much written information available about the tapes, Hudson was able to tell McCartney who was speaking in each recording and why it was so important to preserve those voices.

“What we were really, really fortunate about was that Ray had been the one that recorded them,” McCartney said. “And I reached out to him, and he gave me absolutely tons of information about the recordings, which really helped me write the grant.”

The grant started in November of 2020. Ideally, McCartney said she and her team would have finished digitizing, cataloguing and getting the recordings online by about June, but things like the pandemic have slowed the process.

The tapes have all been digitized and are still being catalogued, meaning someone is writing and editing descriptions for each reel. McCartney says her group is also working on getting them online, but staff shortages and technical problems make it tough to say when exactly they’ll be available.

McCartney’s work will end once those recordings are online and she’s gotten word out to the community. She said she’s glad to help share these stories.

“They’re absolutely precious cultural recordings,” she said. “Not just for the people of that area, but the people of the world, for our cultures and languages everywhere.”

The Cuttlefish tapes will be available to anyone with a stable internet connection, through UAF’s online library catalog at some point in the near future.