Science

Humpback whales recorded using huge fins to forage

Researchers notice whales’ unusual feeding behaviour in south-east AlaskaHumpback whales have been captured on film herding shoals of fish into their cavernous mouths with their oversized pectoral fins.Marine biologists recorded the extraordinary feeding behaviour for the first time off the coast of Alaska, where the whales lurk around salmon hatcheries that release juvenile fish into the sea. Continue reading...
Tags: Whales, Science, Animal behaviour, Marine life, Wildlife, Environment, Cetaceans, World news, Alaska, US news

Typhoon Hagibis Is Japan's Latest Multi-Billion-Dollar Disaster

Typhoon Hagibis may now be a swirl of clouds near Alaska, but its impacts on Japan are still playing out. The country was walloped by the storm over the weekend, with some areas receiving 40 percent of their annual rain in the span of a few days.Read more...
Tags: Japan, Science, Alaska, Disasters, Flooding, Typhoons

Abandoned SD Card Labeled 'Homicide' Provides Road Map to Real Murder

A found SD card that was labeled “Homicide at midtown Marriott” and contained videos and photos depicting a brutal killing has led to an arrest for murder.Read more...
Tags: Murder, Science, Alaska, Marriott, Sd Card

Bow Down to Holly, Your Fat Bear Week Champion of 2019

All hail Holly, winner of Fat Bear Week 2019 as well as our hearts.Read more...
Tags: Science, Conservation, Alaska, Holly, Fat Bear Week, Bears Bears, All Hail Holly, Holly Your Fat Bear Week Champion

Yellow cedar trees denied for US threatened species listing

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A federal agency has rejected an iconic Alaska tree for listing as a threatened species due to climate warming. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday that yellow cedars do not warrant additional protections the area affected by climate change represents less than 6 percent of the tree’s range. A […]
Tags: Science, News, US, Nation, Alaska, Northwest, Wildlife Service, Anchorage, Alaska AP

Tsunamis linked to spread of deadly fungal disease

A huge earthquake off Alaska in the 1960s caused tsunamis that scientists say washed a tropical fungus ashore.
Tags: Science, Alaska

Climate change killing off Bering Sea puffins, say scientists

When an unusually large number of puffin carcasses began to wash ashore on Alaska's remote St Paul Island in the fall of 2016, the local tribal population grew alarmed. "There was no fat there, the musculature was literally disintegrating," co-author Julia Parrish said of the birds, which washed up on the island, some 300 miles (480 kilometers) east of the mainland.
Tags: Science, Alaska, Bering Sea, St Paul Island, Julia Parrish

Puffins are dying in large numbers in the Bering Sea

Puffins are dying in worryingly large numbers in Alaska and scientists say it could be directly linked to climate change.According to a new study published in PLOS ONE, there's been a mass die-off of tufted puffins and crested auklets on St. Paul Island, one of the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska.Between Oct. 2016 and Jan. 2017, over 350 bird carcasses were recovered by tribal and community members, many washed up on beaches, the study reports. Tufted puffins made...
Tags: Science, Earth, Alaska, Pacific, University of Washington, Bering Sea, Timothy Jones, St Paul Island, Pribilof Islands, Arctic Oceans The Arctic, Lauren Divine

Albino panda cub is the cutest genetic rarity you'll see today

Thanks to a group of Chinese researchers and a rare genetic mutation, we're discovering that the world's best bear can get even more adorable. On Sunday, scientists at Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan, China released a photo of an all-white, albino giant panda — believed to be the first of his (or her) kind known to human researchers.  The image, taken by the reserve's motion-activated cameras in mid-April, shows the one- to two-year-old panda cub walking through brush, ...
Tags: Science, China, Alaska, Sichuan China, Wolong, Wolong National Nature Reserve, Sarah Stebbins

Magnitude 5.8 earthquake strikes off southern Alaska coast; no damage reported

HOMER, Alaska (AP) — A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck off the coast of southern Alaska, but no damage has been reported. The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake hit around 1:50 a.m. Monday southwest of the Kenai Peninsula at a depth of 40 miles (65 kilometers). A dispatcher with the Homer Police Department said there […]
Tags: Science, News, Nation, Alaska, Northwest, U S Geological Survey, Kenai Peninsula, Alaska AP, Homer Police Department

A big red reason not to dig a mine in Alaska's fat bear country

Like the sun promises to rise each morning, hordes of crimson salmon -- numbering in the tens of millions -- faithfully return to Alaska's Bristol Bay each summer.This land of untrammeled rivers, streams, and lakes is home to the richest run of sockeye salmon on Earth. And largely for that reason, it's also the realm of Alaska's gloriously fat bears, who gobble the hefty 4,500 calorie fish -- sometimes a dozen each hour -- throughout the fleeting summer.  Yet, the Trump administratio...
Tags: Science, America, Alaska, Pacific Northwest, Bristol Bay, Pebble Mine, New England, Trump, Katmai National Park, Eis, Colorado River, Fitz, Cunningham, Corps, Brennan, Army Corps Of Engineers

Could the Inuit Steer Us Through Climate Change?

Cheryl Ramalho/GettyWhen I set out to talk to traditional navigators in the Arctic, Australia, and Oceania, I had not anticipated how intricately the issue of climate change would be intertwined in these conversations. Again and again the indigenous communities I visited happened to be on the front lines of climate disruption, and only later did I fully appreciate that it was often because of their unique cultural practices, including oral transmission of information through generations and meth...
Tags: Science, Washington Post, Nasa, Mit, Atlantic, Alaska, Arctic, Columbia University, South Pacific, Greenland, Lapland, North America, Pacific, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Columbia

Alaska's thaw threatens prehistoric sites once frozen in time

The first artifact -- a wooden mask -- was discovered in 2007 by a child who stumbled upon it while playing on the beach near his home in Quinhagak, a village in western Alaska that sits by the Bering Sea. Over the following months, hundreds of similar objects -- baskets, finely carved harpoon shafts, lip plugs, wooden dolls, ivory tattoo needles -- emerged from the earth as melting permafrost and erosion driven by climate change revealed a Yupik Eskimo settlement dating back to the 1600s. Tod...
Tags: Science, Alaska, Bering Sea, Quinhagak, Yupik Eskimo

Climate change forcing Alaskans to hunt for new ways to survive

As far back as he can remember, Willard Church Jr. has gone out ice fishing well into the month of April, chopping holes that were easily four feet deep into the Kanektok River near his home. "I am a hunter and a fisherman and I have spent my whole life living the subsistence lifestyle," Church, 55, a member of the Yupik Eskimo community, told an AFP team that recently visited the remote village of about 700 people that sits by the Bering Sea and the Kuskokwim Bay. As world leaders and scienti...
Tags: Science, Alaska, Afp, Bering Sea, Kuskokwim Bay, Willard Church Jr, Kanektok River, Yupik Eskimo

Alaska's indigenous people feel the heat of climate change

The cemetery has already been moved twice, the old school is underwater and the new one is facing the same fate as erosion constantly eats away at the land in Napakiak. The tiny village located in southwestern Alaska, along the meandering Kuskokwim River, is one of dozens of coastal indigenous communities across the state that are on the front lines of climate change, their very existence and way of life threatened by the warming temperatures. "The shoreline keeps eroding much faster than pred...
Tags: Science, Alaska, Afp, Kuskokwim River, Walter Nelson, Napakiak The tiny

Not so fast: Trump’s Alaska drilling study slammed by U.S. wildlife regulator

The unusually harsh criticism from federal wildlife regulators could deal a blow to one of the most high-profile items in President Donald Trump’s energy agenda, and reflects the pitfalls of the administration’s drive to speed up big projects with quicker, shorter environmental studies. The Interior Department wants to hold its first lease sale of at least 400,000 acres in ANWR, America's largest wildlife sanctuary, later this year, but could face lawsuits if its permitting process is flawed.
Tags: Science, Alaska, Interior Department, Donald Trump, Trump, ANWR America

Alaska's indigenous people feel the heat of climate change

The cemetery has already been moved twice, the old school is underwater and the new one is facing the same fate as erosion constantly eats away at the land in Napakiak. The tiny village located in southwestern Alaska, along the meandering Kuskokwim River, is one of dozens of coastal indigenous communities across the state that are on the front lines of climate change, their very existence and way of life threatened by the warming temperatures. "The shoreline keeps eroding much faster than pred...
Tags: Science, Alaska, Afp, Kuskokwim River, Walter Nelson, Napakiak The tiny

Who's that sassy bird photobombing a London traffic webcam? A deeper look.

A traffic webcam in London has a popular visitor. Transport for London -- the city agency responsible for overseeing public transit in the sprawling metropolis -- has 177 live cameras keeping tabs on traffic. A sassy looking bird has been photobombing one of the cams, just above the Blackwall Tunnel (which runs under the River Thames).Over 2 million people have taken a look at the transit agency's most recent twitter posting of the white-headed bird, posted on April 30. Who is this attention...
Tags: Science, London, Alaska, Transport, Kansas, Alcatraz Island, Kaufman, Blackwall Tunnel, Kenn Kaufman

Chemical records in teeth confirm elusive Alaska lake seals are one of a kind

Lifelong chemical records stored in the canine teeth of an elusive group of seals show that the seals remain in freshwater their entire lives and are likely a distinct population from their relatives in the ocean. Their home territory, Iliamna Lake, is in the heart of the proposed Pebble Mine project.
Tags: Science, Alaska, Iliamna Lake

Alaska's Excelsior Glacier Is Being Replaced by a Lake 5 Times the Size of Central Park

Seventy years ago, Alaska's Excelsior Glacier stretched its cold fingers from a vast plain in the state's southern edge nearly all the way to the North Pacific Ocean. Now, the glacier is separated from the sea by a meltwater lake more than five times the size of New York City's Central Park.In a recent blog post on the American Geophysical Union (AGU) website, glaciologist Mauri Pelto of Nichols College in Massachusetts shows how that relatively new lake -- now called Big Johnstone L...
Tags: Europe, Science, Massachusetts, New York City, Nasa, Earth, Alaska, Greenland, Excelsior, Central Park, U S Geological Survey, Nichols College, North Pacific Ocean, Mauri Pelto, American Geophysical Union AGU, Pelto

Not so fast: Trump's Alaska drilling study slammed by U.S. wildlife regulator

The unusually harsh criticism from federal wildlife regulators could deal a blow to one of the most high-profile items in President Donald Trump’s energy agenda, and reflects the pitfalls of the administration’s drive to speed up big projects with quicker, shorter environmental studies. The Interior Department wants to hold its first lease sale of at least 400,000 acres in ANWR, America's largest wildlife sanctuary, later this year, but could face lawsuits if its permitting process is flawed.
Tags: Science, Alaska, Interior Department, Donald Trump, Trump, ANWR America

'Air bear' flight to Russian Arctic returns polar bear who drifted 400 miles south on ice

An “air bear” helicopter flight has returned a polar bear to the Russian Arctic after he drifted more than 400 miles south on an ice floe. Fishermen ran into the two-year-old male bear last week near Tilichiki, an isolated village in the Kamchatka region on Russia's Pacific coast.  Since polar bears are not usually found in Kamchatka, it is believed that the marooned bear had floated in on a piece of ice from the neighbouring Chukotka region. He was nicknamed “Umka” after the playful polar b...
Tags: Science, Russia, Alaska, Arctic, David Attenborough, Pacific, Kamchatka, Chukotka, Chukchi Sea, Bering Sea, Siberian Times, Novaya Zemlya, Tilichiki, Umka, Kamchatka The sea, Vladimir Gordienko

Fact You May Not Know: America Has Nuked Itself 1,032 Times

A handful of nuclear tests were conducted in Alaska, or more specifically the Aleutian island of Amchitka. The first test, in October 1965, was designed to test nuclear detection techniques and had a yield of eighty kilotons. A second test occurred four years later, and had a yield of one megaton, or one thousand kilotons. The third and largest test, Cannikin, was a test of the Spartan antiballistic-missile warhead and had a yield of less than five megatons.Nuclear weapons have a mysterious qual...
Tags: Science, United States, Alaska, Amchitka, Cannikin

Tick, tick, tick: Alaska braces for invading parasites

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Alaska health and wildlife officials are taking steps to track undesirable parasites showing up in the state. Researchers plan field work this summer to sample non-native ticks that could gain a foothold because of the warming climate. University of Alaska Anchorage assistant professor Micah Hahn says non-native ticks can carry and […]
Tags: Science, News, Ap, Nation, Alaska, Northwest, Anchorage Alaska, University of Alaska Anchorage, Micah Hahn

Extreme weather continues to batter USA this year: Is global warming to blame?

Tornadoes in the South, floods in the Midwest, crazy heat in Alaska. What's going on with the extreme weather this year?
Tags: Usa, Science, Alaska, Midwest

Al Roker Takes His Crusade Against Climate Change to Ground Zero in Alaska: 'This Is Real'

Al Roker On Alaska Climate Change Trip: 'This Is Real'
Tags: Science, Alaska, Al Roker, Ground Zero, Al Roker On Alaska Climate Change Trip

Record-early Alaska river thaw follows high winter temperatures

Key Alaska rivers that are usually frozen at this time of year are now free-flowing, with record-early thaws following record-high winter and spring temperatures. In the interior Alaska city of Nenana, ice on the Tanana River gave way just after midnight on Sunday. It was by far the earliest breakup in the 102-year history of the Nenana Ice Classic, an iconic Alaska betting pool in which participants predict when thaw will sink a wooden tripod placed on the ice.
Tags: Science, Alaska, Tanana River, Nenana

Annual Competition to Guess When Alaskan River Will Thaw Ends on Earliest Date Since 1917

The Nenana Ice Classic, a betting match on when ice on Alaska’s Tanana River breaks up enough to tip a tripod linked to a clock, set a record this weekend by ending nearly a week earlier than ever recorded, the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reported.Read more...
Tags: Weather, Science, Climate Change, Environment, Global Warming, Alaska, Ice, Climatology, Fairbanks Daily News Miner, Tanana River, Nenana Ice Classic

Earth's glaciers lost 9 trillion tons of ice. That's the weight of 27 billion 747s.

Nine trillion metric tons. That's how much ice Earth's glaciers lost in the 55 years between 1961 and 2016. An international team of scientists used satellite and direct field observations to conclude that Earth's glaciers have melted such a profound sum of ice in the last half-century. They published their report Monday in the journal Nature.  If one were to assume an average weight of 735,000 pounds for a 747 airliner (not the colossal Alaskan bear), that comes out to around 27 bil...
Tags: Asia, Science, Nasa, Earth, Alaska, European Space Agency, Greenland, East Coast, Antarctic, University of Zurich, Robert Rohde, Mendenhall Glacier, Josh Willis, World Glacier Monitoring Service, European Alps, Michael Zemp

How a Sea Ice Meltdown Is Disrupting Life in Coastal Alaska

Every year in the western Alaskan town of Nome, as mushers and their dog teams cross the finish line during what’s locally known as “Iditarod week”, golfers take part in the annual Bering Sea Ice Golf Classic. The tournament takes place on the expanse of shore ice that usually extends miles off the town’s banks over…Read more...
Tags: Science, Climate Change, Alaska, Arctic, Bering Sea, Nome, Coastal Alaska