Watch After the Kaktovik Whalers Harvest, Polar Bears Feast in New Channel | Channify
c-kIbEurLeldYRZqHh 3140391 qSv9uOTij1A
Views
—
Likes
—
Comments
—
Published
Nov 1, 2012
Channel
caschmidt922
Add More Videos To your Channel
Inupiat whaling families in Kaktovik, Alaska, on Barter Island in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge can take up to three bowhead whales a season for subsistence. They carve the flesh and blubber (muktuk), as well as the baleen (a filter-feeder system inside the mouths), and distribute for communal use. Carcasses are hauled to a boneyard on the northeast shore of Barter Island, where polar bears that "summer" on the nearby barrier islands in the Beaufort Sea swim to enjoy the leftovers.