The cormorants gave their lives for Alaska reality TV. Four of them died, their bodies pierced by arrows shot by Palmer archer Austin Manelick -- or so it would seem if you can believe what is said on the cable TV show "Ultimate Survival Alaska."
Anchorage archer Ed Schlief watched the show filmed on Nunivak Island off the coast of far Western Alaska and was appalled.
"They are actually breaking federal law and on camera,'' he said in an email. "If I hunted and killed cormorants, a protected bird under the (federal) Migratory Bird Act, I would be fined. One guy is filmed doing just that. Another guy is shooting at waterfowl with a .22 pistol. I'm sure someone in the state or federal law enforcement has seen this. But I haven't read a word. If you really want to get nauseated and maybe throw up, watch that episode."
Cormorants are, as Schlief noted, a federally protected large seabird, and a reasonable conclusion might be that Manelick broke the law by shooting them.
Only this is Alaska, where things are seldom reasonable.
While it is illegal to shoot cormorants in the U.S., said Rory Stark, a special agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there is an exemption to the law for what is called "subsistence" in the 49th state. Subsistence is the killing of animals for food, fur or feathers by rural Alaska residents. A resident of Western Alaska can legally shoot cormorants for subsistence, Stark said.
But federal regulations also say that "In Alaska, any person may, for subsistence purposes'' shoot cormorants, a foul-tasting fowl. The term "subsistence'' in that context is usually read to mean "for survival'' in the north.
Manelick, Stark said, clearly didn't shoot the cormorants for subsistence. The video makes it clear he is not in a survival situation. He is but a short walk from the island village of Mekoryuk, where there is plenty of food.
So Stark said Manelick's shooting cormorants would be illegal, but the law enforcement agent is skeptical any were actually shot and killed with a bow and arrow.
The only evidence Manelick killed cormorants is in the "Ultimate Survival" episode titled "Desolation Island," which Schlief watched. In the video from that show, Manelick is shown trying to kill cormorants with his bow and arrow.
"On a rocky cliff over the Bering Seas (sic), Austin is determined to take down a cormorant," the narrator of the program intones. The camera cuts away to cormorants swimming on the ocean, then comes back to Manelick in time for the narrator to say: "He takes aim a second time."
"Woo, woo, woo," Manelick shouts, "I hit this one. I hit this one right here."
There is, however, no footage of any cormorants being shot. Just another cutaway from Manelick to a dead cormorant floating in the water with an arrow through its body.
"Nice job. Nice job," an unidentified voice off camera says before the shows cuts to Tyler Johnson, another "Survival" star, splashing into surf on his way toward a large rocky outcrop.
"I'm gonna go and get this one," Johnson says. "There we go, first one, man."
"Tyler's happy to retrieve their prize," the narrator says, "but Austin's not satisfied yet."
Manelick is shown drawing his bow once more.
"Oh, there's another, another one," he says.
Video shows him releasing an arrow.
"It looks like you tagged him," says an unidentified voice.
"He's in the water. We've got dinner," Manelick responds.
"Oh yeah, you got a good shot on him, man. It was dead on," says the unidentified voice.
'Got game' but how?
Johnson is later shown on the beach holding two dead cormorants and two arrows. Still later, he looks into the camera and says: "It was incredible. He was able to kill a cormorant with that bow. The guy's got game, you know."
But Manelick is never shown actually shooting a cormorant.
Asked in an interview, "did you shoot those cormorants on Nunivak Island?" Manelick answered, "You'd have to talk to National Geographic. I don't handle any of the PR stuff."
National Geographic Channel is the television network that carries the show, which is produced by Brian Catalina Entertainment in California. Attempts to reach the producers proved futile. The company's phone number connects to a voice mail system that says the names of Catalina, executive producer Kristina Wood and producer Kevin Hoban -- all of whom are reported to have worked on "Ultimate Survival" -- "cannot be found." The system does not allow for connection to an operator. The company lists no email.
Manelick, informed that he broke the law if he actually shot cormorants on Nunivak, said, "I don't know what you're talking about, sir." He then claimed he was too busy to talk, said to call back later, and ended the phone call. Later calls were not answered.
Not the tastiest bird
Wildlife agent Stark has reason to be skeptical any cormorants died. Stark is a climbing buddy of Johnson, the man shown retrieving the dead cormorants in the "Survival" show. Stark said Johnson has indicated to him that so-called "reality TV" in Alaska sometimes isn't so real.
Stark suspects Nunivak residents Travis and Lindsey Shavings, who appear briefly in the show, might well have shot the cormorants and given them to "Survival" producers to use for cinematic purposes. It would be legal for the Shavings to shoot cormorants, Stark said. The Shavings could not be reached for comment.
National Geographic Channels was. however, reached at its headquarters in the Washington, D.C., area. When the cormorant shooting was explained to spokeswoman Stephanie Montgomery, she confessed she had no idea what a cormorant might be. A couple of days later, she emailed this statement about the hunt:
"Our production company tells us that during filming they consulted with the Alaska Department of Fish & Game to see if the cormorant hunting rules applied to only those unit residents or to all residents, and the department confirmed to them at that time that the rule applied to all Alaska residents, which Austin was at the time."
Alaska state hunting regulations, which are different from federal hunting regulations, could certainly be read to indicate this. The state hunting regulations for Game Management Unit 18, in which Nunivak resides, says there is no open season on cormorants for nonresident hunters, but says that for "resident hunters," there is no closed season.
The regulations also note "a bird may be taken only if used for food or clothing, and no bird or part of a bird may be sold or offered for sale."
In Alaska -- unlike in any other state in the nation -- the federal government and the state are in a long-running battle over who has the ultimate authority to manage wildlife and fish in the far north. Thus there are often different rules for who can hunt where based largely on where they happen to live.
There is one set of rules for nonresident hunters, another set for Alaska resident hunters, and yet a third set for rural resident Alaska hunters. State wildlife officials said they weren't thinking about urban Alaskans going to Western Alaska to hunt cormorants when the regulations were written largely because the birds taste so bad no one would want to shoot them.
A U.S. Fish and Wildlife service biologist described the taste as "very fishy," and forwarded a humorous recipe that ends with this sentence: "Not even a starving vulture would eat it."
Hunger does, however, have a way of changing one's appetite. A subsistence study done by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in the Pribilof Islands southwest of Nunivak in the Bering Sea in the 1980s noted accounts of explorers who discovered Native residents there eating "shags," as they called them, in the 1870s, when no other winter meat was available.
"They are seldom shot, however, when anything else can be obtained'' the old account noted, and the report from the 1980s added that "few of these birds, however, are hunted today, and those that are obtained are usually given to older persons who are fond of them."
The premise of the "Ultimate Survival" show is that Manelick and his buddies need to shoot the cormorants to, as the narrator puts it, "provide much-needed protein for the legs ahead." The other "legs" of the show, billed as an Alaska survival challenge, take place elsewhere in Alaska after the crew is flown off Nunivak. None of the participants in the show look to be suffering from lack of food.
And the cast of "Survival" is never shown eating any cormorant. If they shot the cormorants and didn't eat them, they would be breaking an Alaska law against the "wanton waste" of big-game animals and "wild fowl."
Montgomery said that isn't the case. "The production company also confirmed to me that the cast did consume the cormorant," she said in the email.
No law against lying
Stark said he is looking into what happened on the island, though there is no law against reality shows making things up.
With Alaska reality shows, he added, "it's getting worse all the time."
Dan Rosenberg, a waterfowl biologist with Fish and Game and clearly not the guy consulted by "Ultimate Survival Alaska," said that whether or not laws were broken "may depend on who shot the bird -- resident or nonresident of Alaska, time of year, and location and perhaps whether they were a permanent resident of an eligible subsistence community. Being a dramatized, staged TV show one might also argue that they are doing it for commercial purpose, which seems illegal, but now we are way out of my field."
Elizabeth Ipsen, a spokeswoman for the Alaska State Troopers, said the state agency charged with enforcing fish and wildlife laws is also taking a look at the show, though questions have been raised about how diligently that law enforcement agency investigates what happens on shows produced for the National Geographic network. The agency's own reality show -- "Alaska State Troopers," a valuable recruiting tool for the state -- is a National Geographic product.
An attorney for an Alaska gun dealer and guide with a show on another network has accused troopers of selectively enforcing laws to aid Nat Geo. Brent Cole, who represents "Wild West Alaska" star Jim West, contends troopers only monitor for potentially illegal activity on TV shows on networks other than their own. West faces illegal hunting charges related to his show on the Discovery Channel.?
Whether "Ultimate Survival" actually consulted with Alaska Fish and Game on cormorant hunting or got its advice from Alaska Wildlife Troopers, a division of Alaska State Troopers, is also less than clear. The two agencies are regularly confused. Fish and Game sets the hunting regulations and sometimes enforces them, but the main enforcement authority is the troopers.
Schlief suggested it might be worth law enforcement paying closer attention to what is on TV because the reality shows send all of America the message that hunting laws common to the rest of the country don't apply in the far north. Along with the cormorant shootings, he noted the apparent attempt to take waterfowl with a .22-caliber -- illegal in all states and Alaska -- and the use of a shotgun that hasn't had its capacity limited by a plug.
During the show, Tyrell Seavey, another star of "Survival," is shown shooting a semi-automatic shotgun he describes this way: "We went hunting with some local kids today, semi-automatic, nine rounds."
Salmon that doesnt flop
If Seavey was on the island when the sport hunting season was closed, Stark added, it would be illegal for the him to hunt waterfowl, but the show could still obtain geese from local residents with subsistence privileges to use in the show to make it appear Seavey had been hunting.
In the show, Seavey is portrayed as struggling to bag waterfowl with a single-shot shotgun, but when a camera is actually mounted on a shotgun barrel to look back at him as he shoots, it is on a semi-automatic. Stark described that and several other odd scenes in the show as "weird."
At one point, Matt Raney, another of the shows stars, appears to "catch" a dead salmon. Raney is shown fishing, and he says, "I've got a fish." The narrator then announces "Matt's determination has landed him a 15-pound silver salmon, cause for celebration."
But there is no video of him playing the fish and only the briefest glimpse of a salmon being dragged onto a cobble beach. The salmon does not move. Experienced Alaska anglers say they've never seen a live salmon dragged out of a river onto a beach without it flopping.
Matt later delivers the fish to his excited father, Marty. Marty has been one of "Ultimate Survival"'s most active promoters and has in the past emailed Alaska Dispatch to take issue with reports that some of the show might not be so real.
Queried about the fish, Raney emailed this statement:
"Please (accept) this as my response. Tyler Johnson tells me that you and him are good friends. Based on that, I would like to bow out of this dialogue. And let Tyler and you discuss these dynamics of the show. That seems to make the most sense to me, as I am sure you would agree."
The author of this story and Johnson know each other from the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic, a race across the Alaska wilderness that comes much closer to "Ultimate Survival Alaska" than the TV show. Johnson is a past winner.
No production company has ever made even an attempt to film the race. It is simply too damn difficult. The legal waiver for the race makes this fundamentally clear:
"No help will be available. No rescue can be anticipated ... We are warning you," it says. "Any decision you make is your own and you are responsible for it. Your injuries or death are not our problem."
No one has died yet. But there have been close calls. No animals, however, have been killed. There is no need. A man, or a woman, can easily go days without food with no threat of starvation.
The crew of "Desolation Island" were, according to the show, on Nunivak for 72 hours.
Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com.
Editor's note: This story has been updated since its initial publication to replace an earlier version that did not include comment from National Geographic.