Climate & Environment/Science

IPOP LLC, the mining company associated with Rivers of Gold, has applied for a permit to mine gold using a 36-inch cutterhead dredge in the Safety Sound, about 25 miles east of Nome.

Susanne McDermott, a fish biologist with NOAA Fisheries, says that after tagging 38 cod last year, none of them stayed under the ice in the Northern Bering Sea over the winter.

Reports of dead seabirds found on the shores of Western Alaska are being documented again this summer. If numbers continue to rise, this would mark the fourth year in a row the Bering Strait region has seen a seabird die-off.

Alaska Department of Fish & Game’s area manager for the Norton Sound, Jim Menard, said as of opening day, zero commercial crabbers had signed up to fish for the 140,000-pound crab quota.

Several fires sprang up on the Seward Peninsula yesterday after the Alaska Fire Service correctly predicted lightning would spark new blazes in the area. Some of them have already been contained.

Nome residents have now experienced the warmest May in the city’s climate history. According to one climatologist, the average temperature of almost 46° for the month broke the previous record from more than 35 years ago.

The Norton Sound saw several lightning strikes spark new wildfires across the region, mostly in the southwest. More than 20 blazes were started across the state within the last two days.

Even without researchers coming into the region from the outside, local and regional stakeholders are moving forward with an investigation into what caused five times the normal number of seals to wash up dead in the Bering and Chukchi seas since 2018.

Following top five record harvests of silver and chum salmon in the Norton Sound last year, the Alaska Department of Fish & Game is projecting even better salmon numbers for the region this summer.

Bowhead whales have begun their summer migration to Canada, and whaling communities in the Bering Strait region have reported a successful spring hunting season. But, researchers have recently found some bowheads deviating from their usual movements.