Here is an interesting group of images originally put together just for one person in relation to an email conversation we were having in October of 2007. Rather than delete it I've edited a few things and am adding it to the homepage menu.

Index to Images on this page

Tundra Flower (5359.jpg)

This image is here just to provide some perspective. This is a shot taken on July 14, 2006. That puts it at just about the "peak" of summer... at a time when the sun has been up for 24 hours a day for two months, and at the only time of the year when the temperature might actually get above 70 Degrees F.

But the signficance is to compare this flower with the dates on other images... :-)

Seal Hunters 1 (5787.jpg)

This is the first of a series of four shots. There were others after these, but these tell the story.

First, these were take on July 17, 2006. That is, three days after the picture of that flower above! And even more interesting, these were taken standing in the same place as the picture of the sandy beach! (One huge difference is that these were taken with an 800mm lens, which is to say that those guys in the boat are a long ways away.)

The men are butchering a seal that they have just shot. It can be seen, just barely, as the horizontal object on the ice.

Seal Hunters 2 (5792.jpg)

Even in July there can still be a lot of ice in the ocean. The ice in these images is "shore ice", which is to say that it is frozen to the bottom of the ocean. All that water between the beach and the ice has just opened up in the few days before this was taken, and in not too many more days all of that ice will let loose and be blown away by the wind.

But as soon as there is some water, everyone is out seal hunting! The seals are around the ice, and as soon as that ice disappears, so will the seals.

This seal was shot in the water perhaps 50 feet from where they are, and pulled up onto the ice to be processed.

It isn't obvious, but in the first image there is an ice flow just to the right of the boat. In this image it has drifted to the left and just the tail end of it can still be seen.

Another other thing that is not obvious is that I was taking pictures of the boat and the men, and did not see that seal swimming just to the lower left from the boat! I must have gotten 5 or 6 images of that seal before I even noticed it.

Seal Hunters 3 (5793.jpg)

So here the seal is still unnoticed by the hunters. This is about where I became aware that it was there.

Seal Hunters 4 (5794.jpg)

It still has not been noticed by the hunters, and in fact shortly after this picture was taken the seal ducked under the surface and was gone for awhile.

Unfortunately for the photographer, as opposed to the hunters, when the seal came up again it was on the other side of another drifting ice floe... and was right smack in front of the boat load of hunters. But while I could easily tell what was going on, it was all hidden by the ice floe, so there are no pictures.

Ocean Ice Forming at that Sandy Beach (4730.jpg)

This is yet another image take from the same location and at just about the same angle as the one with the sandy ocean beach. It's just a little farther to the right, so that building doesn't show up in this one. This was taken on November 12, 2005, and shows the ocean ice just beginning to form.

A Young Walrus (8023.jpg)

This walrus, which is clearly very young given the small tusks, hauled out on the beach right in front of town. This is about 1/4 of a mile northeast of the location of the other beach images, and looking in the opposite direction too.

One function of the blubber on a walrus or a seal is to hold oxygen. They like to sit, hopefully in a sunny location, out of the water to soak up oxygen and get some rest. They can then feed on animals that live on the ocean bottom, which they dig up with their tusks.

Second and Third Grade Field Trip to Beach (8174.jpg)

This photograph was taken of a field trip made by 2nd and 3rd grade children from the Ipalook Elementary School. They walked along about a mile or so of beach, on September 25, 2006, picking up any trash that they found. They then took the bags of trash to the North Slope Borough's waste treatment plant, and toured that facility to learn how garbage is handled.

This location is maybe 3 miles northeast of the other beach pictures. Obviously it doesn't leave any doubt that it looks like the Arctic Ocean and people are dressed up just like Eskimos. The two folks in the picture are Miranda (Brower ??) and her son (I'm not sure what his name is). And of course... they are Eskimos.

Ice and Snow on that Sandy Beach (6870.jpg)

This is the same "Sandy Beach" scene. Just about the only thing similar is the outline of the house on the left.