Walrus Radio Tagging in the Chukchi Sea 2007

We tagged 9 walruses with satellite radio-tags near Barrow during the 2007 ice retreat to better understand walrus habitat use in the Chukchi Sea. Radio-tags were attached to walruses using a crossbow from a small boat. Sea ice retreated rapidly along the northwest coast of Alaska this spring and was blown far offshore from sustained easterly winds during our tagging work (June 20 – July 4). Some tagged walruses swam in the opposite direction of the receding ice to occupy very scattered ice floes far south of the main ice edge.

Key	Location of Maps Above
Lease Sale Area
Tag Deployments
Walrus Relocations
Sea ice images based on AMSR-E passive microwave (12.5 Km resolution) processed by the ARTIST sea Ice algorithm (www.seaice.de). Note that near shore ice later in the seaon is an artifact and that regions with < 10% ice cover are not resolved.

Radio-tags were provided by US Fish & Wildlife Service. North Slope Borough,
Department of Wildlife Management, kindly provided field support and assistance.

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