Working lunch with Eskimo elders and leaders: Mayor Edward Itta (and whaling captain)

Working lunch with Eskimo elders and leaders: Mayor Edward Itta (and whaling captain)
Originally uploaded by uscgpress

Shipmates,

During our stay at Barrow, we participated in a working lunch hosted by the Eskimo Elders and local leaders of the North Slope Borough, Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, and others.

The facilitator was our old friend Mayor Edward Itta. Mayor Itta is a former Navy "Tin Can" sailor and a Whaling Captain.

We have learned much from our friends who engage in subsistence hunting north of the Bering Strait. As a result, we have been able to deploy in the summer without disrupting their traditional activities. Point Barrow is unique in that it is the dividing point between the Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea.

The main resource that is hunted here is the Bowhead whale. The spring hunt, which is from the ice, takes place in the Chukchi Sea when the whales are migrating east and north along the Alaska/Canadian coastlines. The fall hunt takes place from land launched small boats in the Beaufort Sea while the whales are migrating west and south.

The intersection of these subsistence hunting activities and other uses of the continental shelf (i.e. oil exploration and production) were the subject of many discussions during our trip.

Later in the day, Dr. Lubchenco and I held a separate meeting with the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission regarding these intersecting activities.

The meetings were indicative of the entire trip as we are learning more at each stop.

These discussions were followed by a trip to the Prudhoe Bay production site that is managed by BP for BP, Conoco-Phillips, and Exxon Mobile. This is the site where the Trans-Alaska Pipeline begins (the southern terminal is Valdez).

ADM A