Tag Archives: Barrow

Teenager helps land Utqiagvik’s first whale of fall season

“Jen, you wanna harpoon?” She hesitated, not knowing where to throw it. While captain Donovan maneuvered the boat closer, Gatten and Adams coached the teenager on where to shoot the darting gun. “Three feet behind the blowhole, straight down,” captain Donovan said. “She just put a money shot right on the whale, which rolled the whale right over,” captain Donovan said later that week. “It was pretty awesome to see.” The catch: a   36-foot, 1-inch, young male bowhead that community members will subsist on over the next year. When the four boats docked by the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory runway in the evening with a whale in tow, more than 150 cars sat waiting on shore to help butcher the animal and take home a share of meat, Michael Donovan said.  “ Whaling is equal opportunity, as far as Michael Donovan is concerned. “The ladies are just as tough as men,” >click to read< 11:13

Hunting for whale and votes in Barrow, Alaska-‘It’s exciting that people in this small community could shape America,’

Gabe Tegoseak tired after a late night spent butchering one of three bowhead whales that subsistence hunters towed in from the pewter-colored waters of the Chukchi Sea. Slabs of blubber cover front yards all over town, and Tegoseak has some whale of his own to cut up and cook at home. But not yet. There is an election coming soon, and doors await his knock. Harold Snowball answers one of them. Read the rest here 08:50

Alaska whale hunters wary of oil drilling-“This place has been transformed because of oil.” Barrow, Alaska

Barrow, Alaska — Minutes after the hunters’ harpoon pierced the flesh of a bowhead whale, the  call went out. By cell phone and radio, Alaska whale hunters wary of oil drilling-“This place has been transformed because of oil.”  “The infrastructure that you see in Barrow is what was brought in by oil,”  Leavitt said. “Before the discovery of oil, there was no education  past eighth grade. This place has been transformed because of oil.” http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Alaska-whale-hunters-wary-of-oil-drilling-4062827.php

I guess Ollie Leavitt thinks it’s also time to bring “progress” to Indigenous tribe discovered in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest!