Hunters harvest bearded seals and teach youth

For Byron Adams, subsistence hunting is not only about providing food, it is also about teaching the young generation traditional practices.

Earlier this summer, Kivalina hunters — Byron Adams, Tommy Swan Sr. and Theodore Booth III — went out to harvest ugruks — bearded seals. They took with them two of Adams’ nephews to show them “how important it is to take care of your catches and what you have to do to work together as a hunting crew,” Adams said.

The crew harvested two seals, and young hunters got to try their hand at various tasks — looking for seals, transporting the harvest and processing the meat.

For Aaron Mitchell, 17, this was his first ugruk hunt, and his most favorite part was searching for seals.

“We went from the boat to the ice, and we were crawling to a seal,” Mitchell said.

The crew went out as far as Rabbit Creek, past the port site toward Kotzebue, Adams said. The conditions were favorable, but some ice was dark and rotten, so the experienced hunters taught the young ones how to be careful, where to stand and how to read the ice conditions.

“We look at the ice thickness,” Mitchell said. “We watch for the dark spots on the ice.”

The lesson is an important one, especially considering the changing ice conditions in the Arctic.

In 2019, the Kotzebue area saw extremely diminishing sea ice and uncharacteristically early breakup, which allowed bearded seal hunters to start hunting earlier that year,

But the ice loss also affects how long hunters can go out on ice safely.

“We hunt bearded seals with our lives on the line. The oceans can be dangerous,” Adams said. “But we love to eat our Native food, so we do what we can to provide.”

Correction: The story was updated to reflect that the three adult hunters were Byron Adams, Tommy Swan Sr. and Theodore Booth III.