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.
Want to see the flight paths of migrating swans as they come and go from Alaska? Or the seasonal meanderings of Pacific walruses in the Chukchi Sea? Now you can via USGS’ new Tagged Animal Movement Explorer (TAME). The online tool animates the migratory routes of hundreds of marine mammals, seabirds, and others that are carrying satellite transmitters.
Holding my breath camera ready, I crouched by a ledge of lichen-crusted shale. Around me stretched an expanse of wind-scraped tundra hills grooved with caribou trails, marked here and there by the bleached bones of wolf kills, grizzly scat, and the hoofprints of muskoxen. But my focus just then wasn’t on that limitless landscape and the unseen, outsized creatures that roamed it, but on a cleft in the nearby rock.
The Alaska Baseball League is celebrating its 50th year. The league’s five teams, all from the Anchorage and Kenai Peninsula areas, play an annual season that begins in June and wraps up with a post-season “Top of the World” tournament in early August. The collegiate league uses equipment that meets Minor League specifications, and its players are unpaid so they can maintain NCAA eligibility.
Happenings Around Alaska in July and August
If you or your loved-ones take an Alaskan adventure this summer – big or small – consider bringing along these phone numbers.
Above: The Dakhká Khwaán Dancers. Photo courtesy Simon Ager The Dakhká Khwáan Dancers from Whitehorse, Yukon, are the lead dance group at this month’s Celebration in Juneau, the…
I’m “whale challenged.” Allow me to explain. Though I’ve photographed numerous whales of all species—and even pet a few friendly gray whales in Baja—most of the time, I have zero idea what I’m looking at when I see them.
It’s hard to walk into an Alaskan home without encountering a Rie Muñoz painting. A self-taught artist with an easy laugh, this Dutch-American found her way into the heart of the 49th state.
