Wildlife

Juneau lies in the midst of prime black bear habitat. Bears and people have to share the city, and new research hopes to figure out how they can do that more peacefully.

The number of bears killed in Juneau has quadrupled since the 1980s. Just this summer, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game euthanized two young bears downtown after they became aggressive while eating from trash cans.

Roy Churchwell is the management coordinator for wildlife in Southeast. He says bear-human encounters have always happened in Juneau, but he suspects population growth, combined with pressures brought on by human-caused climate change, might be contributing to more problem bears. 

“There have been some upticks in some years, because it’s become a little more common for there to be fewer fish and fewer berries,” Churchwell said. “When that happens, that brings more bears into town.”

When bears have trouble finding their natural foods, he said, they might turn to “urban foraging.” That’s a fancy way of saying they eat our trash. 

That’s a problem for public safety, as bears can get overly comfortable around and aggressive towards people when they’re regularly eating trash. Often, that’s what leads the department to put a bear down. According to Churchwell, they want to avoid that outcome whenever possible.

“How, as a department, might we be able to manage the people — and manage the bears — in a way that we can both be in town but have less of an impact on each other?” he said.

To learn more about how to improve their management strategies, the department commissioned Dr. Todd Brinkman and researcher Binta Wold, experts in wildlife ecology from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. 

Brinkman and Wold have designed a survey to learn more about the way people interact with bears around town. It was sent out this spring to 5,000 randomly selected residents.

Though waste management is a known source of bear problems, the survey hopes to learn more about specific patterns in the way people interact with bears around town.

“So, how many people are getting their trash broken into every year? How many people are experiencing property damage,” Wold said. “And is there anything we can learn about that group of people?”

It might be that bear resistant trash cans are cost prohibitive, Wold said, or bear encounters are more common in neighborhoods that lack garages to store their garbage. It’s also possible that overflowing trash cans attract bears to areas that are crowded with tourists. 

The survey asks questions about those possibilities, and about how Juneau residents feel about the Department of Fish and Game’s bear management strategy over the last five years. 

Wold said nearly 1,000 people have filled out the survey so far. While there are no concrete results yet, most respondents agree that bears cause serious problems in town.

“But so far, a majority of folks responding also are saying that they enjoy living alongside bears and that the benefits of living alongside bears outweigh the costs,” she said. “It’s a complex story.”

The goal is for the survey to simplify that story, or at least help wildlife managers to make sense of it, so that they can come up with strategies to help bears and Juneauites continue living side by side with minimal conflict.

Salmon sharks appear to be turning up in Kodiak fishermen’s nets and washing up on public beaches around Kodiak Island in greater frequency this summer. But there isn’t enough data to determine if the shark population is growing off the coast of Alaska.

On Sunday, a Kodiak resident stumbled upon a salmon shark washed up on Boy Scout Beach, near the Buskin River. And a few fishermen around Kodiak have reported seeing or catching more sharks than usual in their fishing gear this summer too.

The species is a cousin to the much larger great white shark. It looks menacing, but Oregon State University researcher Alexandra McInturf says it is harmless to humans.

“Historically they were called salmon sharks because they were seen at the river mouths up in Alaska eating salmon,” McInturf said.

McInturf researches salmon sharks, among others species, at what Oregon State calls its Big Fish Lab. Even though Kodiak Island has seen dwindling runs of pink salmon and Chinook this summer, McInturf said salmon sharks are known to eat a variety of forage fish, mainly ones that are commercially viable like pollock, herring and even squid. Salmon sharks’ eating habits also depend on several other factors like their age and gender.

“They do not seem to be salmon specialists,” McInturf stated. “And so if there are poor salmon runs, then they might have to shift their foraging patterns to exploit other resources and that could be why they are being encountered by different (fishermen) than previously.”

Research over the last decade, from 2016-2021, suggests these predators play a role in the dwindling Chinook salmon numbers. But the direct link between king salmon declines and salmon shark predation is unclear.

Similarly, it’s difficult to determine the total number of salmon sharks in Alaska waters and the differences between stocks migrating from place to place up and down the West Coast, along the California current to places like Baja, and into the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea. More data is being gathered on the animals’ habitat range as the Alaska Department of Fish & Game is tracking the movements of salmon sharks like Ada, an 8-foot female, tagged in the Northern Bering Sea a couple years ago.

McInturf also points out that even if more sightings of salmon sharks are being reported around Kodiak Island this summer, the sharks could have already been in the area in greater numbers.

“They don’t occupy two-dimensional space, right? Like they could be around but at depth. So in addition to thinking about their distribution geographically, we also have to think about their distribution throughout the water column,” McInturf explained. “So even if we haven’t been seeing them at the surface, they could have been around but perhaps feeding on something more at depth.”

Salmon sharks have been seen as far north as the Bering Strait, around the Nome area, in recent years and could continue to migrate further as climate change pushes their prey into colder waters. They are one of several shark species that can regulate their own body temperatures and are classified as warm-blooded, according to McInturf.

Fisheries biologist Cindy Tribuzio, with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center which is part of the National Marine Fisheries Service, agrees with McInturf; there is not enough catch data to support the idea that the amount of salmon sharks being caught in fishermen’s nets, as bycatch, is increasing in the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska.

“What’s being observed (in Kodiak) could represent population changes. It could also just represent the stocks being condensed in a certain area because of a certain food source. There are so many different things that could be leading into this observation that is going on right now,” Tribuzio said.

Tribuzio works at the Auke Bay Lab in Juneau and handles the stock assessments for sharks in the Bering Sea. She said it’s hard to estimate the number of salmon sharks, and other shark species overall in Alaska, partially due to a lack of data coming from the state’s commercial fisheries.

Since salmon sharks are not targeted for a specific commercial fishery, the latest research suggests there is no overfishing occurring in the Bering Sea or Gulf of Alaska (Aleutian Islands region).

The last stock assessment of salmon sharks in Alaska, and others like Pacific spiny dogfish, Pacific sleeper shark, was released in 2022 and the next one won’t be completed until 2026. In the meantime, a new forage study about salmon sharks’ diet from McInturf’s team at Oregon State University is expected to be released later this year.

Black cod fishermen in the Bering Sea have reported an increase in orcas taking their catch off their fishing lines in recent years. Orca depredation isn’t just a costly headache for fishermen — it can be dangerous for orcas, too.

Jeb Morrow has been long-lining for black cod around Alaska for most of his life. The process includes baiting hundreds or even thousands of hooks to catch oily fish on the ocean floor. When he started fishing in the 1990s, he heard stories from elders about orcas regularly stealing their catch, but he said it was only within the last few years that it became a reality for him.

“I can tell you without question these orcas are geniuses,” Morrow said. “They just adapt and conquer at a level that is like nothing we’ve ever seen.”

The problem is so bad that Morrow has decided to skip fishing for black cod this year. He said it’s not worth the hassle. Morrow and his crew have to be careful to protect their catch. For instance, they have someone whose only job is to look out for killer whales with binoculars in the wheelhouse. Once an orca is spotted, the crew immediately cuts and anchors the line, leaving the area as quickly as possible.

“Because you don’t want to be known as a boat that feeds the whales,” Morrow said. “If they establish you as a boat that will feed them, you’re (expletive) for life.”

Morrow said orcas are so intelligent that they’ll follow the boat for the rest of the season. And once the opportunity strikes, the orcas will continuously approach the vessel and take caught fish.

Asia Beder, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Dutch Harbor, has seen the behavior herself and said stories of orca depredation in the Bering Sea have increased in the last few years.

“Seeing it in person, I was shocked at how quickly they found us, how smart and fast they were at pulling the fish off,” Beder said.

As a management biologist, Beder finds this behavior puzzling. She said that when orcas are around a fishing boat, it doesn’t always mean they are trying to steal the harvest — they also like to play with gear. However, when fishermen aren’t catching fish, it could mean there are orcas around quietly taking caught fish.

Beder said it’s challenging to manage the amount of black cod in the fishery when fishermen can’t accurately count how many they’ve caught, knowing that the orcas are also a factor. So, in the state survey, she said fishermen have a box to check if they saw orcas around while fishing.

“I feel both sides of the equation,” said Beder. “I feel for the orcas, and I also feel for the fishermen.”

Federal agencies also manage the black cod fishery in the Bering Sea.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, orcas aren’t just going after catches from small boats. They’re also going after large commercial vessels, which has resulted in a recent spike in orca deaths from gear entanglement in Alaska.

Suzie Teerlink, a marine mammal specialist with NOAA, said orcas are starting to show new feeding behaviors around large trawler nets. They’re trying to steal fish caught in nets that are typically being hauled back. Scientists aren’t sure why orcas are doing this, but it’s dangerous for them because it increases their chances of getting caught in the net and dying.

Depredation can also be pod-specific. Killer whales are cultural learners — the elders teach the young survival skills particular to their hunting area. They’re also opportunistic.

“They’re looking for calories that aren’t difficult to get,” Teerlink said, “using as little energy as possible to get as much energy, calorie gain as possible.”

Teerlink said orcas have been following fishing boats for food for ages. Orca depredation isn’t just a Bering Sea problem; it also affects fishermen in other parts of the world. She emphasized that fishermen try to avoid orcas. For instance, many black cod fishermen are transitioning to pot gear to prevent the fish from being stolen off the hooks.

“When it comes to killer whale depredation, they’ve [fishermen] been innovating ways to reduce this since the onset and have already come about with lots of different tools and ideas,” Teerlink said.

Morrow believes it’s only a matter of time before the orcas can outsmart the latest fishing gear. For example, a few years ago, fishermen created a new kind of pot called the slinky pot, which worked for only a couple of seasons.

“It was like the answer to all our problems fishing black cod in the Bering Sea,” Morrow said. “And then the orcas figured it out, like in two years, they had it figured out, and they were shredding our pots, and it was done.”

Even if the orcas can’t get the fish out of the pots, Morrow said they’ll smash onto it, so the fish aren’t good anymore. So fishermen are trying heavier, more durable pots — but only time will tell if they’ll work.

As for Morrow’s black cod fishing future, he’s not optimistic.

“If it’s just me versus the whales, they’re gonna win every time out there,” Morrow said.

So, Morrow said he might invest more time and money in other fisheries.

Two people were injured Monday when a wolf bit them as they were stopped for construction work along the Dalton Highway, according to Alaska State Troopers.

Troopers learned of the attack near Coldfoot, at Mile 37 of the highway, shortly before 3:30 p.m. Monday according to an online report.

“Investigation revealed a wolf bit the two motorists in their lower extremities while they were stopped in a construction zone and out of their vehicle while waiting for the pilot car,” troopers said. “The wolf fled into the woods after being shot at by another motorist and is not believed to have been struck.”

Troopers spokesman Austin McDaniel said the attack occurred as the motorists – both Alaskans – were outside their camper and examining it. Multiple other commercial vehicles were stopped in the area at the time.

The Dalton extends more than 400 miles north, linking Livengood in the state’s Interior with Deadhorse and the state’s Prudhoe Bay oilfields. The isolated highway, seen on the TV show “Ice Road Truckers,” is the primary overland link to the North Slope.

McDaniel said that the black wolf was showing behavior consistent with having been fed by motorists prior to Tuesday’s incident – including a lack of fear of humans.

“The wolf would stop at vehicles, kind of look like he was expecting food or some type of handout from the vehicle before proceeding on to the next vehicle,” McDaniel said.

The people bitten by the wolf continued south and received medical care in Fairbanks, McDaniel said. Troopers didn’t have word on whether they had suffered rabies or other infections from the wolf bites.

Alaska Wildlife Troopers were consulting with state Department of Fish and Game biologists Tuesday to determine whether they should seek out the wolf involved in the attack, McDaniel said. Requests to the Fairbanks Fish and Game office for comment weren’t immediately answered Tuesday afternoon.

Wolf attacks on people are rare in Alaska, but Chignik Lake teacher Candice Berner was killed by wolves in 2010 as she went jogging near the Alaska Peninsula village. Homer public radio station KBBI reported that Fish and Game biologists killed eight wolves following the attack, one of them positively identified as one of the wolves that attacked Berner. Her death came a year after Bethel public radio station KYUK reported that a moose hunter survived an attack by a rabid wolf along the Kuskokwim River.

Last June, Fairbanks public radio station KUAC reported that a Coldfoot-based wildlife trooper shot and killed a male wolf that was attacking semi trucks’ tires along the Dalton. A necropsy showed signs of malnutrition, but no indication that the wolf in that incident was rabid.

Based on the behavior of the wolf in Monday’s attack, troopers urged people not to feed wild animals.

“Even though these individuals were not feeding the wolf, it was observed to be exhibiting behavior indicative of having been fed by other motorists,” troopers said in the dispatch. “Feeding wildlife is not only dangerous but also illegal and punishable with a fine.”

Two deceased whales were discovered in the Icy Strait area in July in Southeast Alaska. Scientists believe at least one died after being struck by a vessel.

On July 3, NOAA Fisheries received a report of a floating yearling humpback whale, which later washed ashore near Elfin Cove. Mandy Keogh is NOAA’s marine mammal stranding coordinator in Alaska. She says they worked with their stranding partners to respond and perform a necropsy, or an animal autopsy, on the whale.

“A few days later, and that investigation found evidence of blunt force trauma, so there was bruising, there was some broken bones, and those are all indicative of a large blunt force trauma, which would really only be a vessel strike in that area,” Keogh said. “So we have determined that the cause of death for that yearling was of likely a vessel strike.”

She says the broken bones were larger, which is consistent with the whale being struck by a larger vessel.

A second humpback whale was reported floating near Point Adolphus on July 22. The whale was identified as a 23-year-old female. While they found some bruising on the whale that may have suggested a vessel strike, due to the whale’s size and position they weren’t able to fully examine the bones to confirm the cause of death.

“We also confirmed in that autopsy or necropsy that she was actually pregnant at her time of death, and so we found fetal bones in her uterus, which was very sad to hear,” Keogh said. “This female hadn’t been seen with a calf before, that we know of. So it was also a hard finding because of that.”

Keogh says a large number of whales are active in the area and they’ve received a number of reported whale interactions from boaters. Cruise ships, ferries and fishing boats all frequent Icy Strait.

Keogh says the best thing boaters can do to prevent vessel strikes across Alaska’s waters is slow down.

“Just try and reduce your speed, especially if you’re in an area like Point Adolphus and Icy Strait area, where we know this summer we’ve had a lot of whales, to just slow down your boat speed,” he said. “That allows you more time to observe a whale in the area. It also may help the whale not be surprised by vessels moving into the area, so that’s the safest thing you can do, and it’s also safer for the vessel operator.”

Alaska’s humpback whale approach regulations require that vessels stay over 100 yards away from humpback whales, not disrupt whale activity and operate vessels at slow, safe speeds when near whales. Boaters can report all dead, injured or entangled marine mammals to NOAA’s 24-hour stranding hotline 1-877-925-7773.

The Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward admitted an orphaned Pacific walrus calf last week that was found alone on a beach in Utqiagvik. According to a press release from the center, the female calf was likely left on its own after a walrus herd passed through the area.

The calf weighs nearly 165 pounds and is believed to be no more than a few weeks old. She’s one of only eleven walruses that have been admitted to the SeaLife Center since it opened in 1998.

Center staff say the walrus was dehydrated and malnourished after it arrived in Seward. It also had minor scrapes and lacerations.

Carrie Goertz is the director of animal health at the SeaLife Center. She says the walrus calf has perked up and has started feeding from a bottle.

“She has improved slightly,” Goertz said. “Big milestone in terms of getting her to nurse from a bottle, it really makes it so much easier to care for her. It also gives us good feedback in terms of what her appetite is doing.”

According to the SeaLife Center, the care regimen for Pacific walruses is more demanding than other marine mammals. They’re highly social animals that seek comfort through physical contact with their mothers, meaning staff work around the clock to act as surrogates. In the wild, walruses are usually under the care of their mothers for more than two years. Because the calf was separated from its mother before learning to survive on its own, Goertz said the calf will not be released back into the wild.

Under the SeaLife Center’s care, Goertz says the young walrus’ bloodwork and eating habits are trending in the right direction.

“She has gained a little weight, which is great,” Goertz said. “Good sign that we’re meeting her needs, and a number of her bloodwork parameters have improved.”

If you find an injured or stranded marine animal in Alaska, you can call the 24/7 Stranded Marine Animal Hotline by dialing 1-888-774-SEAL. For more information about the Alaska SeaLife Center, visit its website.