From Chukotka to the North Slope and from the village to the research vessel, walrus is an important species to understand for those who live and work in the Arctic.
For that reason, walrus management was the subject of a series of roundtable discussions at the Arctic Science Summit Week this month in Fairbanks.
While concerns ranged from poor conditions for hunting to the effects of ocean acidification and climate change on the animals, the common thread was that there needs to be a more comprehensive and collaborative way of monitoring the species.
One of the goals was to come up with a list of concerns, talking points and suggestions from various parties that could be used to guide funding requests and project proposals down the line.
"I think I got what I was hoping out of this," said Nicole Misarti, a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who coordinated the first panel. "It may not have been in the format that I had laid out or thought we would go, but we have a list. It's a big list and over the next couple of weeks, we're probably going to pare it down, but we have things that we pretty much seem to agree upon that need to be the priorities, which is great."
On one side of the table were the U.S. researchers who talked about changes to sea ice, the food web and walrus haulouts.
Others discussed the need for monitoring of long-term warming periods to look for clues as to what might be the future of the population in light of climate change. Will the population decrease? Will it migrate to different haulout and feeding areas?
"Looking at walrus now is kind of like closing the barn door after the horses are gone," said one scientist, referring to the effects already being seen on the population. "But, it still needs to be done."
On the other side were a group of Russian researchers, both indigenous and not, who have focused their efforts on the walrus populations in Chukotka.
Some of those observations included that more females are hauling out in unusual places and stampedes due to human disturbance are causing unsettling mortality events.
"We have the information and observations from Chukotka, but we have nothing from the Bering Strait side," a lifelong observer and researcher noted and advocated for sharing more information with international colleagues.
Although much of the discussion focused on breaking down boundaries between the two countries, there was, at first, a lack of focus on likewise bridging the gaps between locals and the scientific community.
About halfway through the first daylong panel, following a series of comments about utilizing traditional knowledge without responses from those indigenous participants at the table, one of the representatives of the Eskimo Walrus Commission spoke out.
"The term traditional knowledge has been thrown out a lot and I feel like we haven't gotten anywhere with that," said Katya Wassillie. "I have to emphasize that with traditional knowledge, you can't just interview people and call it traditional knowledge, you have to have traditional knowledge-holders verify that that's what statements meant."
She pointed out "an underlying understanding" about the politics and cultural differences that often cause divides between researchers and the communities in which they work.
"We can't talk about using both traditional knowledge and science if they're not going to be weighed the same," Wassillie said. "The reality is a lot of the management decisions that are made are made under the dominant culture, so if we're really going to come together and make decisions using both bodies of knowledge, we need to discuss that."
Following her comments, there was somewhat of a redirection of the conversation. Not only did the hunters who attended begin to speak out more, many of the participants began asking questions and thinking of ways to incorporate local communities into their projects and work.
"We want to see more information we can understand in layman's terms," said a hunter from Shishmaref. "As hunters, we can also sample in the field (for projects). It goes both ways."
Misarti said she had hoped going into this panel that this would be a focus of the discussion and would help guide the list of priorities.
Among the participants were several locals who talked about the changes they've seen to walrus habitat over the past several years.
"Our traditional knowledge of when to head back to shore isn't as accurate as it used to be," said the Shishmaref hunter, citing unpredictable and unsafe sea ice conditions and changing weather patterns.
Hunting for many subsistence species, including whale and walrus, has become not only more dangerous, but less reliable in recent years, with a number of communities having to declare food shortages after slim hunting seasons.
"My wish is to have a good spring hunt for our communities and not go into disasters again because of the weather conditions or the sea ice," said one of the hunters. "But, I learned a lot of things from this workshop and about trying to solve the things you really want to."
One of the ideas that garnered strong support was creating a website where everyone from hunters to researchers to observers could post information to be shared across the board.
Another was to find a way to incorporate indigenous knowledge-holders into a peer-review process already in place for scientific research.
"They may be able to look at data and see something we can't," said one of the researchers.
Above all, he said, "no matter how far apart we seem to be sometimes, I think, really, we're all on the same side."
The end result of the walrus meetings was a guiding document that will be shared among the participants and according to Misarti, a renewed drive to do research the right way.
"I think we need to re-learn how we structure our research projects and it's not an easy thing. It's really hard even among the different types of hard sciences to get all of these pieces to fit together. It's hard to cross those disciplinary boundaries for scientists, let alone the cultural boundary. You need to have people on your projects that can do that," she said. "I think we need to start training the next generation of scientists to work that way. I really do believe that."
This story first appeared in The Arctic Sounder and is republished here with permission.