Geoff Carroll

Research on Bowhead Whales Protects Traditions

Above: On a National Geographic expedition to the North Pole in 1986, Geoff and his group had to navigate dangerous ice conditions during the 56-day journey. Courtesy Geoff Carroll

Geoff Carroll worked as a biologist for 50 years studying whales, muskoxen, and caribou near his home in Utqiagvik. While he’s originally from Wyoming, he has spent most of his life exploring the Arctic and learning about its animals, its people, and its rhythms. In fact, his research on bowhead whales helped protect the tradition that defines America’s northernmost people. — as told to and edited by Molly Rettig

What brought you to Utqiagvik in the first place?

I started coming up in the mid-70s when I was going to the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. I saw a note on a bulletin board looking for somebody to do bowhead whale work and called a number. For a couple years, I collected samples from whales that were harvested. I would spend as much time as I could on the edge of the lead with the whale crews or camping and watching the whales go by.

I’ve heard about your work on the bowhead census. How did it help protect whaling on the North Slope?

Back then, there was this idea, not based on facts, that there were fewer than a thousand bowhead whales, and they were seriously threatened. In 1978, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) was pushing for a moratorium on whaling. My wife, Marie, who I didn’t know at the time, was working with the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission to fight the moratorium. I had already spent a couple seasons out on the ice watching a fair number of whales go by, and it became pretty obvious what was needed was an accurate count. When the controversy heated up with the IWC, the federal government decided to fund a full-time census.

What did that entail?

We would spend a couple months every spring with a crew made up of local residents and biologists from various places, camping out on the sea ice and keeping a count going whenever possible. Whale crews were very helpful in recommending good counting locations and keeping us safe. We did the counts near Point Barrow because most of the bowhead whale population would migrate past there every year. We’d stand on top of a tall pressure ridge and count them, but you could only see about 3,000 meters, and we didn’t know how many were going beyond that, or how many were passing by when the ice would come in and close the lead.

The North Slope Borough took over running the census and had the ingenious idea to bring up these anti-submarine warfare specialists who taught us to use hydrophones, an underwater microphone we could use to listen to the whales go by. Conveniently, the bowhead whales talk a lot as they go down the lead. Using a combination of the visual count and an array of hydrophones, we were able to show that there were thou- sands of whales, enough to support a subsistence hunt.

What was the community’s response to all this?

It was just devastating to feel like they might have whaling taken away from them. Whaling is everything here. The entire year is oriented around the whale harvest. Right now, people are cleaning their ice cellars, so they’ll be able to put meat and muktuk in there. When a whale is harvested, the whole town becomes ecstatic. Crews work together to harvest the whales, bring them in, and butcher them. Many people from the community also go out to help butcher the whales. They’re total professionals at getting a whale cut up. I’ve seen a full whale get cut up in not much more than an hour. As soon as they get the whale butchered and hauled into town, the family of the whaling captain prepares a huge feast. Everybody in town files through their house and gets a little bit of everything—the muktuk, meat, kidneys, intestines. It’s like Christmas.

Is it as vibrant today as when you first arrived?

Yes, these crews just go on year after year. Kids start early, sometimes as young as 8 or 9. At first, they work around camp, then work their way up to a paddler, maybe a harpooner, and sometimes all the way up to becoming a whale captain. People really learn a work ethic; they learn how to work together. The North Slope Borough and the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation have always been successful in government and business, and I think a lot of that comes from what they’ve learned cooperating through whaling.

Is it as vibrant today as when you first arrived?

In 1986, we mushed dogs to the North Pole. Will Steger and Paul Schurke organized the trip. Their team mushed from Duluth, Minnesota, to Utqiagvik as a warm-up run. They decided they’d like to get another guy that knew something about working and traveling on sea ice. It’s not like traveling across a lake; you’re dealing with pressure ridges that can be three sto- ries high, and you must chop your way through it. The ice can start moving on you and create leads of open water you have to deal with. We got to talking and they asked me to go with them. The next September, we went to Minnesota to build our sleds and put our dog teams together, and then we left from Ellesmere Island, in Canada, on March 8. It took 56 days to get to the North Pole.

What were the conditions like?

When we left, the sun hadn’t started coming up, but we were so far north that within 20 days, the sun wasn’t going down. But it was cold. The first morning, honest to God, the thermometer bottomed out at 72 below. We couldn’t get the cook stove to light, and I had to stick the fuel bottle in my underwear and run around to get it warmed up to ignition temperature so it would burn. We probably had the warmest sleeping bags in the world, with a foot of insulation all around, but because we didn’t have a vapor barrier, all of our perspiration would go into the insulation and freeze, and the bags just became heavier and heavier. At some point they weighed 40 or 50 pounds, and at night you’d have to take a stick and break up the ice before going to bed.

Sounds … fun?

I was probably one of the few people in the group who actually kind of enjoyed it.