- Report on 2003 field season

Pre-Field Season Brings a Cabin and an Interest in Island Sediments

The 2003 field effort started early as I traveled to Barrow in April in hopes of upgrading the field camp with a cabin. My experience in August 2002 with polar bears included seeing a bear silently rip and stick its head in a hole in one of our unoccupied sleep tents.

After that, I realized a tent would never feel like a safe dwelling on the island again, so when Craig George of the North Slope Borough’s Department of Wildlife told me of an 8’x10’ cabin for sale in Barrow I flew up from Seattle to take a look. Within 36 hours of landing in Barrow, I was in a track vehicle owned by Barrow Brower and pulling the cabin over the 25 miles of pack ice to Cooper Island. Using a GPS and a table sticking out of the snow to guide us, we were able to find our campsite and move the cabin into position.

Two months later when I arrived in Barrow to head for the field I was surprised to find that the Army Corps of Engineers and North Slope Borough were considering Cooper Island as a source for the 4 million cubic yards of sand and gravel needed to rebuild a rapidly eroding coastline adjacent to the village of Barrow.

The plan is to "nourish" 25 thousand feet of beach to reduce the rate of erosion. The shoreline is deteriorating due to a combination of melting permafrost, increasing wave height, and a longer open water period – all the consequence of climate change. The erosion threatens the integrity of the “Utilidor,” an underground utility corridor dug out of the permafrost housing water, sewer, electric and telephone lines for the village.

Assessment of Cooper Island and a number of other gravel sources will continue during 2004 and the potential effect of gravel removal on the guillemot colony remains unknown. The ongoing episode puts Cooper Island in the middle of one more way in which warming is affecting coastal areas of arctic Alaska.

Early Summer Weather Includes Thunder, Hail and Record Rainfall

When I arrived on Cooper in June, I found that much of the island had been washed over by a storm in the fall of 2002 and that Cooper was no longer connected to Martin Island, the barrier island to the east. Luckily, the area containing the guillemot colony was not affected but the change in shoreline and surface of the island was startling.

As I was setting up camp, I dug a hole near the cabin to store perishables next to the permafrost, as I have done since 1975. I was amazed to find that there was no permafrost above sea level in the area of the camp, whereas in the past permafrost was within a foot of the surface in June.

Egg laying for the guillemots was early, in keeping with the earlier laying that has occurred since 1990, with the first egg on June 18. Annual survival of adults was high, with approximately 90 percent of last year’s breeding birds returning to their nest sites. Birds laid eggs over the next two weeks with a total 142 active nests, similar to the last years total of 145 but far below the 200+ active nests in 1989.

June and early July were noteworthy more for their meteorological than ornithological occurrences. I experienced the first thunder I have ever heard from the island. Being from the Midwest, I was familiar with the noise, but the flock of guillemots I was observing became startled, took flight and wheeled over the colony before settling back down.

There are fewer than five records of thunder from Barrow. Even more unusual was a strange early summer storm that brought hail to the island and Barrow. According to Weather Service personnel in Barrow, this is the first instance of hail falling at that location since the weather station was established.

A few weeks later a record was set for daily rainfall at the Barrow National Weather Service station, 0.26 inch in one day. Barrow typically receives less than 6 inches of rain per year. A good day to have the new cabin as a shelter.

Disappearing Pack Ice Results in Widespread Nestling Mortality

While meteorological conditions in June were strange, oceanographic conditions were favorable for adults incubating for the 28-day incubation period. Hatching success was 71 percent, similar to the 1970s and 1980s when the colony was growing quickly and nesting success was high.

However, just when the majority of chicks had hatched a storm with wind speeds > 40 mph blew the ice offshore and took along with it the Arctic Cod that is the diet staple of Cooper Island guillemot chicks. Throughout the colony nestlings began to lose weight and die and ultimately only 26 nestlings, out of the 196 hatchlings were able to fledge, all singletons.

Successful parents were able to find alternate prey such as four-horned sculpin and snailfish, two nearshore species rarely seen being fed to chicks in the past. A first for the island was the appearance of a wolf eel in one of the nests; brought back by a parent that was unaware its chick had already died.

If the mid-summer retreat of the pack ice becomes an annual occurrence, the successful guillemots at Cooper Island will be those that are able to find fish populations independent of the pack ice. Breeding success for the year was among the worst on record and the first time that no guillemot pair was able to fledge two chicks from a nest.

August also saw a number of visitors to the island. In early August, a crew from Michigan State visited the island to map the shoreline and nest sites on the island. The results of their work is now available at their website. You might want to visit to see how the current shoreline compares with past satellite photos and view photos of the majority of nest sites on the island.

Later in the month Craig George brought out a group of very good friends of Cooper Island who spent a day putting a second window in the cabin and installing insulation and flooring. Craig’s entourage included Catherine Smith, FCI board member, and Darcy Frey, who was gathering some final material for his book on climate change. A few days later, the North Slope Borough and Army Corps of Engineers came out to look at the island and the gravel. They brought Dora Nelson; part of the National Science Foundation’s Teachers Experiencing the Arctic program.

In the last week of August a film crew from Scientific American Frontiers, a PBS television show hosted by Alan Alda, visited the island. Headed up by John Angier, the four-person crew was traveling throughout the state obtaining footage for a special on climate change in Alaska. The show is scheduled to air in June and as soon as the exact date is known, it will be posted on this website.

The 2003 field season felt strange in many ways. The changes in northern Alaska weather continued as they have for over a decade but this was the first year that the island itself was clearly experiencing physical alteration from that change. Some areas I have walked annually since the start of the study in 1975 are now underwater. Others, washed over last fall, have lost their identifying driftwood lines or other characteristics that made them unique.

The feeling of physical disorientation, the magnitude of the chick mortality and the appearance of fish species that were either absent or rare in past years combined to make the entire summer seem surreal and contribute to a general feeling of unease.  While it is exciting to be witnessing rapid change in the Arctic, the loss of familiar scenery and the predictability that nature typically offers is disconcerting.

If 2003 was an indicator of what the future holds for the region, both the guillemots and the island where they so recently found safe haven will have a hard time persisting through the 21st century.

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