As Wildlife Migrations Shift in Arctic Alaska, So Do the Iñupiat

With climate change altering age-old migrations in Arctic Alaska, wildlife and subsistence whalers also must adjust. See stunning photos.

• Text and photos by Steven Kazlowski
• Wildlife Photos
• Dec 18, 2024

Off Alaska’s Arctic coast, subsistence hunter Charlie Bend Ahmaogak of the Hopson One whale crew waits in a traditional bearded seal skin umiak boat for migrating bowhead whales to travel through a newly opened passageway in the ice.

FOR THE PAST TWO DECADES, I’ve been on an extreme photographic journey on the Alaskan Arctic coast to document one of the greatest multispecies migrations and oldest subsistence wildlife harvests in the world—both having endured uninterrupted for thousands of years.

Each spring, scores of shorebird, seabird and mammal species—including bowhead and beluga whales, polar bears, seals and millions of eiders and other waterfowl—begin migrating hundreds to thousands of miles northeast from their winter habitat at the edge of the ice in the Bering Sea to as far as the Chukchi and Beaufort seas in the Arctic Ocean.

As the animals pass by Indigenous Iñupiaq villages, subsistence whalers head out by boat to harpoon a small number of whales in a sustainable hunt for meat and other parts—from baleen and bones to skin and blubber (used together to make a traditional food called muktuk). By embedding myself with these crews, I’ve gained unprecedented access to the hunters, their remote environment and many of the wildlife species that participate in the migration.

From the beginning of my journey, I was certain of one of the images I most wanted to make: a bowhead whale—the species that takes the lead in the migration—signaling to other bowheads that a passageway in the ice had opened and that they could move northward through a new watery trail (known as a lead) forming across the sea ice.

I finally captured that shot in April 2023. (See first image in slideshow below.) Following Iñupiaq whaling captain Russell Lane, we came upon a large group of bowhead whales at the edge of the ice, approximately 8 miles due west of the Iñupiaq village of Tikiġaq (Point Hope), Alaska, the oldest continuous human settlement in North America. As a lead through the ice began to open, one whale started signaling to the others by breaching, slapping its tail and flippers on the water’s surface, rolling, swimming quickly around the large hole and producing loud sounds audible underwater. Hundreds of whales soon followed the leader through the passage, heading in a northward direction that would take them around the northwestern corner of the continent and past Cape Lisburne into their food-rich summer feeding grounds.

Shooting at temperatures below 20 degrees F from moving ice, I faced challenges capturing the signaling bowhead. Crew members were accustomed to the conditions. The Iñupiat are a strong, resilient and adaptable people. But they face unprecedented changes today, as the Arctic warms nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet. In the past few decades, the Iñupiat have seen climate-related disruptions to sea ice conditions. Not long ago, they often hunted off ice fastened to the ocean floor but now must hunt on more dangerous ice that is not connected to the sea bottom.

The animals they hunt also face new challenges. As the Arctic warms, the timing of the bowhead whale’s migration is shifting—earlier in spring and later in fall—with some whales staying in summer habitat all winter. Less sea ice and more open water also may expose whales to ship collisions, as fishing, cargo transport and other human activities increase. While bowheads rebounded from near extinction after commercial whaling was banned in the 1980s, such impacts of climate change—as well as other threats, including oil extraction and plastic pollution—make the future uncertain. The endangered whales, along with the people who depend on them, are truly on the front lines of a far-too-rapidly changing world. See more images of Alaska’s Arctic wildlife and the Iñupiat in the slideshow below.