Residents of Alaskan village want to flee erosion
The residents of village of Shishmaref, Alaska, population 600, held a referendum last week, in which they voted to move away from their community’s eroding site and escape the violent storms from the Chukchi Sea, the Anchorage Daily News reports.
Shishmaref is on a sandy barrier island on Alaska’s Arctic coast, about 1,000 kilometres northwest of Anchorage.
The village has struggled with erosion for decades, but in recent years storms have undercut permafrost, eaten at the shoreline and swallowed roads. After a storm ravaged Shishmaref last year, the town closed off one street located on unstable ground.
Alaska declared a disaster after the storm and paid for a sea wall made from sandbags piled in wire mesh.
But relocating Sishmaref would cost millions of dollars, and no one knows where the money would come from.
Several other towns along Alaska’s west, northwest and Arctic coasts face equally serious erosion problems.
Alaskan glaciers melting faster than ever
Alaska’s glaciers have been melting faster than ever, according to a team of glaciologists, who have been using airborne lasers to measure the melt in 67 glaciers over 10 years.
Between 1999 and 2001, the team re-measured 28 glaciers and found that they were melting even faster than during previous years.
The meltdown doubled during the late 1990s and has flooded the ocean with enough runoff to raise global sea levels as much as 0.27 millimeters per year, says the glaciologists’ report in the journal Science.
Alaska’s glaciers are now contributing about half of the water flowing into the oceans from shrinking mountain glaciers — and much more than from Greenland’s large ice cap.
The findings suggest that scientists may have underestimated how much sea levels will keep rising.
Experts have attributed rising sea levels to run-off from the melting of ancient ice fields, such as the Alaskan glaciers, and to ocean expansion due to global warming.
Botulism suspected in Alaska
Five villagers from southwest Alaska are in hospital after eating whale blubber poisoned by botulism toxin. Alaskan health officials say 14 people were exposed to botulism, a deadly illness that impairs the nervous system and can lead to death if not treated.
Two people from Kwigillingok, a Yup’ik village of 340 near Bethel, were searching for driftwood when they found a beached beluga whale that had died, but they didn’t believe it had decayed, Dr. Joe McLaughlin told the Anchorage Daily News. They cut off blubber from the tail and brought it home.
Nine villagers ate together Sunday afternoon, sharing the raw blubber. Five others from the same village ate the blubber Sunday or Monday. Within a day or two, some developed nausea, difficulty swallowing, double vision, dry throat or mouth, or dilated pupils. All are possible symptoms of botulism.
The bacteria that causes botulism, Clostridium botulinum, is found naturally in beach soil, ocean water and sediment — even in marine mammals and fish. Health officials say it’s possible that the beached whale had beaten up against rocks and trees, and the trauma introduced bacteria into the tissue.
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