Keeping this blog alive and holding with Marilu Pai, a man from Mangalore, India, who I found at a bowhead whale landing on the Arctic sea ice

This is Marilu Pai, origingally of Mangalore, India, but now of Barrow, Alaska, in a photo that I took somewhere near 2:00 AM this morning. Mr. Pai is a wildlife biologist and a veterinarian who just this past winter landed a job with the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management.

Although on the whole it was a very warm winter for Barrow, Mr. Pai was shocked by the cold when he arrived. Yet, he was thrilled to be here and he has toughed it out and says he is greatly enjoying his job. Come August, his family plans to leave India and join him.

"Nowhere else in the world could I get an apportunity like this," he told me. He said he loves the big, wild, open country of the Arctic Slope and the sea, and all the animals that live thereon and therein, especially the big bowhead whale.

Those ropes behind him are part of a block and tackle system that the Iñupiat whalers are using to hoist a huge bowhead, landed by the Little Kupaaq crew of Harry Brower Jr., ever so slowly out of the water and onto the ice.

Pai came out with a host of other scientists and researchers to make measurements and take samples.

He also spent many, many, very cold hours helping the whalers pull on the ropes. I do not know what the temperature was, but probably right about 0 F (-18 C), which is not too bad but there was a stiff, biting, wind behind it.

It is the whalers and the Iñupiat people of the Arctic Slope, Mr. Pai explained, who he sees himself as working for. So he wants to be low key, never pushy and he wants to help all he can.

As any reader can see, this blog is still in a barely surviving, holding pattern and it will be for a few more days yet.

I will probably wait to make my real series of blog posts from this trip to Point Hope and Barrow until May 17. This coming Friday, I must be in Tok and the Sunday thereafter in Fairbanks. The story that I will be doing in those two places is one that cannot wait until later to be posted, so I will do it immediately upon shooting and then get back to my Arctic work.

I supposed that it is possible that things could suddenly fall into place and I could post this Arctic series before I leave for Tok, but that would really surprise me.

It would be a happy surprise, though.

Kivgiq 2011: Six frames of Tikigaq women dancers

I hate to ask for more patience - a lot more patience - once again, but I am going to, because I now have a new plan on how to go about completing my posting of Kivgiq. I have changed the plan for two reasons. First, when I originally decided that I would post massive amounts of pictures here, I did not think that I was going to be able to dedicate a whole Uiñiq magazine to this Kivgiq. I thought that I would have just a few pages of Kivgiq in the Uiñiq that I am working on right now, so I would not be able to include many pictures at all.

I wanted people to be able to see the pictures, so I thought, "well, I'll just put them on the blog."

Now, while it is not yet absolutely certain, it looks like I will likely get to do a Kivgiq Uiñiq.

When people open that Uiñiq and look at the pictures, I want them to be seeing most of the images for the first time. But if all the pictures that wind up in the magazine appear in this blog first, there will no surprises.

So I thought, "well, I will do a serious edit and I will put the best ones aside for Uiñiq and fill this blog with second, third, fourth and fifth best and then Uiñiq can still be fresh."

But now I don't want all the best that appear here to just be second best, at best.

Plus, for me to figure out which is best and second best is more work than probably just about anyone imagines.

Right now, after having devoted several days to doing my first and second edits of Kivgiq, I have created a working pool of 2000 images to draw from.

But that's still a lot to boil down into first and seconds and thirds and when I sat down this morning with those 2000 working pool pictures in my editor to pick out 30 or 40 to post today, I thought, "how am I going to do it, without spending every minute of this day working on it?"

I have my Lightroom editor so that it shows six decent-sized thumbnail images at a time.

So, when I sat down at my computer and looked at my editor, six of the 2000 images in the working pool showed on my screen.

I suddenly decided that I would just post those six images and save the rest until I can get my Uiñiq done.

So here they are, the six images of the 2000 in the working pool that were on my screen when I sat down: women of the great Tikigaq Dance Group of Point Hope.

I did use one of them earlier, but I am keeping it as part of the six.

When I make Uiñiq magazine, there are always many, many, pictures that I want to use and that I know people would like to see, but I just can't fit them all in. So, as I work on Uiñiq, I will organize all these images into various categories. Then, after Uiñiq comes out and people get a chance to see it, I will do some more postings that will include both images from Uiñiq and the images that I could not fit in but that I know people will want to see.

Maybe by then, I can pick up some good animation techniques, so that I can do some sequences where one image flows into the next to create the effect of motion but not to look like video. Maybe I can find some good sound recordings and add a little bit of sound, too, so that people unfamiliar with the music can hear the beauty and power of it.

Then there is another factor in my decision. There is simply no way around it. I am exhausted right now. I have hit the wall, big time. I am always a hard worker, but in the past few months I have responded to certain situations by going into overdrive, by essentially working on one thing or another from the time I get up to the time I go to bed, often with only a few hours of very poor sleep separating those times.

Now, my work has become a blur to me. I can't see my own work. I look at it but it and my eyes focus on it and it is right there but it is a blur and I can't see it. I need to look away from it, for a short while, in order to see it again.

So, after I post this, I am going to drop everything, grab my wife, take her to town, go see a movie and buy something good to eat.

That is what I am going to do.

I will yet do justice to Kivgiq 2011, but just in a different manner and on a different time frame than I had originally envisioned.

View images as slides

Study of the young writer, Shoshana; my first bike ride of spring; whales spotted off Barrow - Kivgiq whaling dance

Study of the young writer Shoshana, # 3 Million even: After an anonymous blog reader bought me an Americano and pastry at Metro Cafe, Shoshana finds a chocolate frosted biscotti.

If Metro Cafe runs out of fresh cinnamon rolls, then I will sometimes go for a biscotti. And the fact is, the chocolate-covered almond biscotis are damn good.

Last week, I shot a few studies of the young writer that I have not yet had a chance to post. I still will. And when I do, I fear the posting will make some readers feel very sad.

A little after 8:00 PM in the evening, I took my first bike ride of this spring. I don't know what the temperature was, but the puddles that had formed earlier in the 37 degree heat of the day had refrozen. Still, it was warm enough that  I had no need for gloves and was fine in a light jacket.

I enjoyed the ride, but it also caused me to feel very sad. I could not help but think of Soundarya, and how she had looked forward to visiting us here in Alaska, to riding a bike, and to experience snow for the first time.

Naturally, a dog came after me. I wasn't scared of the dog, but I was a little scared for the dog. This is Seldon Road and Seldon Road is a busy road.

I have been hearing reports of bowhead whales being spotted in the lead offshore from Barrow. Pretty early. Every year, a little earlier, it seems. When I was first hanging around on the Arctic Slope, the first sightings usually seemed to come in the last half of April. So maybe it won't be long until whaling starts - depending on what the wind does, what the currents do, what the ice conditions are.

One never actually can predict until it happens.

So here is a "pre-whaling" shot, taken in February at Kivgiq: youth of the Tagiugmiut Dancers of Barrow, performing a whale hunting dance.

No, I did not shoot it in black and white, I shot in color. But I wanted to match it up with some of my old black and white whaling work and so I converted it. When I put it in Uiñiq, it will be color. Truth is, although I do everything in color these days, I still like black and white the best. 

Not everybody understands this.

I can never make digital black and white look as good as film black and white, though.

Maybe this is not quite true. I shot this picture with a slow, 5.6 telephoto lens and to do it I had to push my ISO to 6400. There was no film that held together this well when pushed to ISO 6400. 

Circumstances have pulled me away from my Kivgiq work for awhile, but I am going to open it back up today and so I intend to finally post a final (for now) set of Kivgiq 2011 pictures tomorrow.

View images as slides

Hopson Middle School scientists study bowhead whales and lava lamps, compare clams to humans, make music with glasses, examine declining permafrost and make tea

Okay - I now have enough information to finalize my post on the young scientists from Barrow's Hopson Middle School who participated in the Alaska Science & Engineering Fair, held at Begich Middle School in Anchorage.

I begin with Molly Adams, who studied the bowhead whale and received an award for her work.

Molly posed the question, "why do bowhead whales float when harpooned?"

She advanced this hypothesis: "I think whales will float when harpooned because water is more dense than the whale. I know this because harpooned whales float. The whalers only put one float on the whale to keep it up when they harpoon it because of all the blubber."

She conducted experiments in which she floated blubber in different mixtures of water mixed with sodium chloride (table salt), baking soda, epsom salt and just plain tap water.

In all these cases, the blubber floated.

Trenton Sovalik likes to watch the mysterious colored globules inside a lava lamp float up, sink, float up, sink and just keep doing it over and over - but he did not why it happened. So he made lava lamps in three bottles to find out.  He mixed oil, water, food coloring and salt together and applied heat to the bottom. 

He determined that when the oil is close to the heat source it expands, becomes less dense and rises to the top. There, it cools, sinks toward the bottom, turning wax-like, then heats up and the process repeats itself.

Emily Brower loves music, so she made her own musical instruments out of bottles. She found that she could control the pitch each bottle would ring at when struck by filling each bottle with a different level of water.

Update: I have just learned that today is Emily's birthday. I don't which birthday, but as soon as I find out, I will add it in. 

Happy birthday, Emily!

Randy Patkotak explored the impacts of global warming on permafrost and discovered that the permafrost is shrinking.

Nicole Anderson's project was "Clams vs. Humans" and she worked off the hypothesis that "the muscles of a clam will be similar to the muscles of a human."

To find out if these was indeed the case, "we used a standard clam and a standard human. We then precided to compare and contrast their muscles."

To accomplish this, it was necessary to engage in a little dissection work, so she had to get out her dissecting knife, scissors and screwdriver and then start cutting and dissecting...

...clams, that is. Nicole dissected clams... to do her study of human muscles, she went to the internet.

Her analysis revealed that "the muscles in a clam and human help them move. The clam and human muscles give them strength. The muscles in the clam and human are strong in the body."

Nicole's conclusion:

"There are similarities and difference between clams and humans. Both have muscles. Humans have over 500 muscles and clams have three main muscles."

Ariana Salamat loves tea and did a study of tea and how sugar dissolves in. I am not certain what all she discovered, but I agree with her - tea is good.

View images as slides (includes high school scientists from yesterday)

Barrow High Science students examine topics from the effects of oil upon seal fur to the diets of Arctic fish

Even as the Barrow Lady Whalers were battling their way through the final game of the 3A tournament, another group of Barrow youth were engaged in a statewide competition held in Anchorage. These were bright students from Barrow High and Hopson Middle schools who had come down to compete in the Alaska Science & Engineering Fair, held at Begich Middle School.

Their competition started early in the morning and lasted until evening. I attended portains that took place both before and after the girls game.

This competition does not attract the same kind of crowds as does basketball nor does it bring its participants the same high degree of recognition.

But do not doubt the importance of it. It was good science, instigated by Iñupiat whaler hunters, that gave the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission the scientific data necessary to refute the inadequately researched information that the International Whaling Commission used in 1977 to try to put an end to the bowhead hunt.

Because the Iñupiat were able to teach scientists how to incorporate their traditional knowledge into their research and to improve their methods, the bowhead hunt is doing well today - as are the bowhead.

Now, with the Arctic taking the advance brunt of global warming, with potentially heavy oil exploration looming in both the Beaufort and Chukchi seas and ever more development on land that can impact the rivers and lakes, the importance of science to the Arctic and its people only grows.

This is Jadyn Edwardsen-Harrington with her project on caribou sinew, which she chose because "I am interested in things that were made by my ancestors."

In her project, she explained that sinew "has played an important part in the Iñupiaq's survival kit. It has been around for more than a thousands of years in Alaska's Arctic. Sinew is a type of thread ancient Eskimos used before store bought thread was invented." 

She tested the strength of sinew compared to dental floss, and with different treatments using whale blubber and beeswax. "If I can discover the strength of sinew," she stated, "it may be easier for people to sew with. I think that whale blubber will cause the sinew to work stronger after it has been prepared."

The more homegrown scientists, the better.

Jadyn and some of the students here just may prove to be the ones the Arctic will need in the future.

The importance of the topic Ben Voss chose to study will be obvious to anyone familiar with Alaska's Arctic. 

Ben posed the question, "will oil cause animal fur to lose its ability to insulate? As oil drilling steadily approaches into the Arctic Ocean it seems that the answer is becoming increasingly important in the face of an oil spill. This relevant question became very interesting to me as I heard more and more about the likelihood of Arctic oil drilling.

"I believe that if an animal's fur is contaminated by oil it will be less insulated than clean animal fur."

Ben conducted his test on strips of seal fur that he obtained from an Iñupiat friend who hunts. He conducted conducted various tests that included applying oil to the strips. Among other things, he found that the oil penetrated all the way through the fur and to the inside of the skin.

He also did a good deal of reading as he researched the impact of past oil spills, such as the Exxon Valdez and the BP Gulf of Mexico. Among his many findings:

"An oil spill has potential to cause great amounts of damage to animals and the environment and people involved in the clean up efforts. Oil when mixed with water creates a sticky black tar known as mousse, which sticks to any substance it comes in contact with. Most marine animals can't avoid an oil slick and when they become coated in mouse their fur begins to lose it's insulation properties and many animals perish due to hypothermia.

"Oil can also be absorbed through the animals skin, which slowly poisons it. In seals, oil destroys their fur and damages their insulating layer of blubber."

Stephanie Talbert's family has been eating fish since antiquity and still do, so Stephanie decided that she would like to know what the fish eat. She did some reading and research on the diets of white fish and least cisco and then hypothesized that the fish dined primarily upon snails, and that they did not eat eggs or rocks.

Starting with three white fish, she then conducted her own research. Using an ulu, she cut off their head and dissected them, opening up their stomachs and intestines to see what they had been eating. She then did the same with four least cisco, or Iqalusaaq. 

What she found was that in both cases, her hypothesis had been wrong.

"The male whitefish ate eggs and rocks and the females only ate eggs. I think that my project was awesome," she stated in her conclusion," I learned a lot of new things about the two types of fish I observed. I learned that the whitefish either eats other fish eggs or their own. Also, the least cisco east eggs and has smaller stomachs than whitefish, because it is smaller. I also learned to gut fish. I didn't know how before the experiment.

"I think that it is important to know how to gut fish because my family members do and I can now carry on the past of my culture." 

Okay... now it is getting late in the day and I need to get this post up and go on to other things. So I think I will let the above three serve as examples of the efforts the student put into their project and out of necessity and not to lessen any of the accomplishments of those that follow I will hurry along.

Joe Martelle studied insulation and examined the best, most economical ways to stay warm in the Arctic.

In Barrow and the villages of the Arctic Slope, this is vital knowledge, for certain.

In her Oil Dispersants project, Svetlana Terzioski studied the challenges of removing spilled oil from the oceans.

Billy Thompson looked into wind generated energy in his windmill project. 

In "Food Preservatives," Alaina Bankston studied bacterial growth.

Elmer Thompson took a look at "Electromagnestism."

Inspired by television shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Victoria Codamon studied forensic crime investigation in her project, "Who did it: DNA CSI."

Chan Chroonsophonsak did an examination of "Igloo vs. Snowpit."

During the many hours that the students spent with their exhibits, a variety of judges wandered by. The judges would often stop, study their projects and then grill them with questions - sometimes tough ones. 

Alaina Bankston answers tough questions posed by judge Tom Hennessy.

For her work dissecting and learning about the eating habits of whitefish and least Cisco, Stephanie Talbert received the Alaska Fly Fishers Annual Award of Merit. The award is given to "students whose projects best contribute to our knowledge of fish and their habitats. We feel that your entry was clearly deserving of this award."

The award included a $100 savings bond.

Other special recognition awards going to Barrow High students included:

Billy Thompson: a backpack from the US Air Force.

Svetlana Terzioski: U.S. Metric Association "Best Use of the International System of Units."

Chan Chroonsophonsak: Alaska Professional Communicators Honorable Mention for Best Abstract.

Jadyn Edwardsen-Harrington: U.S. Army ($50), Marine Mammals of Alaska Book and COSAA Notebook.

Elmer Thompson: U.S. Army ($50).

Ben Voss: U.S. Army ($50).

Ben Voss: AK Science Teachers Association (Flash Drive).

It is not yet known if any of the Barrow students placed first, second, or third in their categories, as they had to board their plane back to Barrow before the ribbons were given out.

Congratulations must also go to science teacher Emily Rosenberry, who is also Iñupiat. It was she who taught and prepared the students. She also received help from her husband, Mark, at right. Both served as Chaperones.

I originally intended to also include the Hopson Middle School science fair participants in this post, but I am missing some vital information that I must have first. Once I get it, I will post the Middle School participants. Anyone who wants can take a preview peek at their pictures as they are included in the slide show linked below:

View images as slides