Cross Island

It took me awhile to write and go through images for this one, so it is a bit late.

The Ikpikpuk crew all trickled back in to Deadhorse on Thursday and Friday. When the two girls came back they mentioned that Bob, the pilot at 70 North, offered to take them out to Cross Island to check out some whale skulls. Since we were already planning to have Saturday as a day off since Bryce and Caitlin were going to take Richard Crossley, of birding fame, out to bird in the oilfields, I thought maybe I could go; but I wasn't too hopeful that they would have room for another. Much to my surprise and glee they did; and I got to go out with them. When I asked the others to give me a ride over to the airport, Richard graciously offered his camera with his 300mm lens. What the wha?!?! All I could think was, "This is not real life. This isn't really happening to me." But it is and it did!

Cross Island in the Beaufort Sea

Cross Island is used as a whaling camp for Alaskan natives that live in the villages throughout the North Slope Borough. They are allowed to take a certain number of Bowhead whales in the Spring and Fall season. I've been told that the boats will go out in different directions, and depending on where they find and catch a whale they will pull it to land wherever they can. So, Cross Island is set up to accommodate for that purpose. I guess there are often polar bears there, which makes sense. My initial thought was it would look like this:

What I imagined the island would be like

This is an image from Barrow. One of the pad operators is really nice and shared this photo with us. It looks as if there are polar and grizzly bears, but they are all polar bears. They are just very bloody and grimy from the carcass and from fighting each other over the carcass. But, the island looked like this:

Just a bunch of skulls and birds hanging around. Of course, if there were bears we wouldn't have been able to land the plane and get out to walk around.

Rows of Bowhead skulls

The "shadow" under this skull is actually mostly oil from the decomposition of the tissue on the skull. Liz taking a break on a skull.

Feather in one of the skulls.

Closeup of some tissue on the skull bone.

Just another view of the skulls.

Nicole found this. Preserved quite well.

Not as well preserved as the fox.

This was a fairly small spine, which leads me to believe it is some kind of seal.

Here are some pictures of the plane and from the plane.

Plane console.

Liz and Nicole ready for adventure!

Tundra polygons from the plane.

Ice on the Beaufort Sea.

Approaching the island.

Row of whale skulls on the island.

Buildings on the island.

Pipeline from the plane.

View of Deadhorse and the Sagavanirktok river.

More tundra polygons.

Endicott Island from the plane.

Our housing facility from the plane.

The plane on the beach.

The buildings are really run down so I took a bunch of pictures of them.

Torture device?

Welcome home!

I believe this is where they carve up the whales.

Checking out the sites.

We actually found a couple of Common Eider nests in very odd places around the island. The first was in a shack. The lining of the nest is mostly made of trash; including some plastic and styrofoam. I found this to be very unusual for a bird like an Eider. The second one was right next to one of the trailers, but it actually had a decent amount of Eider down lining the nest.

Trash nest.

The nest is next to the beam on the ground, on the right side.

This is the shack the trash nest was in.

Even though we didn't see polar bears, we did see polar bear tracks!

You can even see some of the detail of the fur on this print!

Big feet!

Sort of a size comparison to Nicole's boot prints.

And of course I have to share the pictures of some of the birds we saw out there.

Glaucous Gull

Sabine's Gull

Sabine's Gull

Arctic Tern

Sabine's Gull

It was a fun trip and I feel very lucky to have gotten a chance to go out there! All of our other work up here is pretty much done. We will have to check that Golden-plover nest one more time. I have a feeling it will not hatch before we leave; the last visit it did not have any signs of hatching and even when the eggs are pipped it usually takes 3-4 days for the chicks to emerge. I suppose we shall see tomorrow. Otherwise, I am very excited to be going home soon. I miss Joey and my friends. However, the Arctic still has its hook in me and I imagine I will find some way to come back to this stunningly beautiful area again. But as far as returning to the oilfields, I have had my fill, and I give them a fond adieu!

A farewell to the Jesus!

PB Crew parting ways =(