After Utqiagvik hunters left beluga carcasses at the boat dock earlier this month, the city mayor offered residents help with cleanup in the future.
“The city supports subsistence hunting, and whatever we can do to help,” City Mayor Asisaun Toovak said. “If that means we need to move the carcasses for them, they just gotta let us know.”
In the middle of the beluga hunting season on Aug. 8, about five beluga carcasses — mostly bones and innards — were left at the NARL boat dock, about two miles out of town, causing an unpleasant smell in the area, city Mayor Asisaun Toovak said. She said she has never seen this many carcasses left unattended.
“By then, those carcasses were about five to seven days old,” Toovak said. “We have such a warm summer, they baked, and it was pretty smelly.”
The city officials reported the incident in a Facebook post the same day, asking residents with any information about who left the carcasses to contact the city. No one came forward with the information, Toovak said.
The North Slope Borough volunteer reached out to the city and brought the carcasses to Nuvuk Point, where residents usually leave the majority of scraps and bones.
Toovak explained that usually when an incident like this becomes a safety or a health hazard, the city uses a nuisance ordinance to find people involved and to motivate them to clean the area.
“It was not so much of a health hazard as it was an annoyance to the smell,” she said. “No bears were attracted to it but ... it could have attracted bears.”