Thursday, July 19, 2007

Global Warming

I spent the past two weeks in the Bering Sea sailing from Kodiak Island to Unalaska-Dutch Harbor to the Pribilof Islands to St. Lawrence Island to Provideniya, Russia and lastly past the Arctic Circle, and saw first hand the effects of global warming, both on the Yupik natives who live in small, very remote villages throughout the area, and on the unbeliveable diverse amount and species of wildlife. All you have to do is listen to village elders explain how shoreline erosion caused by a lack of protective sea ice is affecting their village, and how much more difficult it is to find the same numbers of sea mammals to hunt as they used to see. True, maybe it's a temporary blip on the radar of time, but maybe not. The natives think not.