Cooper Island, Alaska, Aug. 9, 2009 — Driftwood lines in the middle of Cooper Island are important for nesting terns and waterfowl, but in any given year there typically has been little accumulation of wood on the island’s beaches. Until recently, the short duration and limited amount of ice-free water were not conducive to movement [...]

Cooper Island, Alaska, Aug. 6, 2009 — Cooper Island is only 25 miles (as the guillemot flies) from the community of Barrow, the largest village on the Alaska’s North Slope. When the atmospherics are right one can see the inverted mirage of Barrow shimmering on the northwest horizon, and on calm days there is a [...]

Cooper Island, Alaska, Aug. 4, 2009 — The National Weather Service has been saying that the main pack ice is over 100 miles away — and that is apparently true — but this aggregations of very small floes and ice chunks showed up north of Cooper late on Sunday. It persisted through Monday — when [...]

Cooper Island, Alaska, Aug. 3, 2009 — I was writing up the text for the "krill" last night and then there was a need to deal with a bear that had been sleeping on the north beach after coming in off the ocean. Clearly the cabin is the best (or worst) smelling thing on the [...]

Cooper Island, Alaska, Aug. 2, 2009 — My focus on the birds breeding (or trying to breed) on Cooper Island runs the risk of making it seem like the island and surrounding waters are important to a relatively limited avifauna. In reality, the island is on one of the major migratory pathways for birds breeding [...]

Cooper Island, Alaska, July 29, 2009 — Record high of 70 degrees F. (23 degrees F. above normal) in Barrow yesterday which tied the previous record high. The temperature on Cooper Island was 66 degrees F and I would have enjoyed the warmer air more if there was not a bear trying to cool down [...]

Cooper Island, Alaska, July 27, 2009 — In the late 1970s during the first field seasons on Cooper Island, my colleagues and I were preoccupied with the possibility of encountering polar bears since we were sleeping in a tent 20 yards from the Arctic pack ice, the primary habitat of polar bears. We assumed we [...]

Cooper Island, Alaska, July 25, 2009 — People frequently mention to me that summer in the Arctic must be really exhilarating because of the “24 hours of daylight”. While this is true, less well known is that the “24 hours of wind” can make living at this latitude somewhat of a chore, no matter how [...]

Cooper Island, Alaska, July 22, 2009 — Black guillemots, like all seabirds, need both parents to incubate eggs and care for young. This mutual participation of males and females in raising young means the breeding success for an individual guillemot depends to a great extent on finding and maintaining a bond with a high quality [...]

Cooper Island, Alaska, July 19, 2009 — It is not uncommon to hear a hiker or wilderness camper describe the exceptional nature of an outing by emphasizing that at some point on their excursion they realized they might be the first human to ever step foot at that spot. In my opinion, this statement, places [...]