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the Cruising Club of America.

Chukchi Sea
Ice-Out
    Bruce Wright
    I LIVE IN ALASKA, AND MY CLIMATE-CHANGE RESEARCH projects are devoted to understanding changes in the distribution of harmful algal blooms, paralytic shellfish poisoning, and domoic acid. I also study highly migratory sharks (salmon sharks and great whites). However, in June 2007 I was teaching a 7 Generations environmental education class in Wainwright, an Inupiat village of about 550 people on the Chukchi Sea. Wainwright is a whaling community and is very connected to the sea for both spiritual and physical sustenance.
    My classroom was a hall in the community building, about a hundred meters from the beach, but no waves pounded the shoreline because it was sealed in ice. After class I had plenty of daylight to go exploring; in June the sun is up twenty-four hours a day. Two Inupiat boys playing in the sand above the ice-covered sea asked who I was and what I was doing. We quickly became friends and talked about our communities; mine was Wasilla. I asked about the boats and the meat piled on the ice. They said it was shares of whale meat and muktuk (whale skin and fat) that the community elders had not yet picked up, and they convinced me we should go investigate. I brought my pocket knife, and the three of us shared a little bit of muktuk.
    During class on my third day in Wainwright, a man opened the door and excitedly said, “The ice is going out! The ice is going out!” Sure enough, half an hour later, while on break, the entire class walked to the beach and saw that the sea ice had retreated miles offshore. I was especially surprised because there was no wind; the ice seemed to be moving by some strong unseen force. By the end of class the sea ice was no longer visible; it was at least twenty miles out. So I went to my room to unpack the folding fishing rod that always accompanies me in my travels and returned to the shore of the Chukchi Sea to fish.
    After a while an elder came up behind me and silently watched for about five minutes, then asked, “Catch anything?” I waited a minute, then responded, “No.” After making five more casts, I asked if there were any fish here. Five minutes went by while the old Eskimo thought of an appropriate response. Finally he said, “Don’t know.” Then, after another brief wait, “You are the first human being to fish here in June. Ever.”
    In 2007 the sea ice at Wainwright went out six weeks earlier than had ever been recorded in local knowledge.

    Bruce Wright lives and works in Alaska as a senior scientist for the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association and executive director of the nonprofit Conservation Science Institute. When not spending time with his family, he enjoys being in the wilderness, where he is regularly close to wolves, bears, and moose.

Climate Change and Creature Comforts
    Terril L. Shorb
    IN THE HIGH DESERT OF THE AMERICAN SOUTHWEST, we know what global climate change sounds like. It is the sound of many tongues lapping. When we moved to central Arizona seventeen years ago, one appealing feature was the presence of wild javelina, deer, foxes, coyotes, tarantulas, and a rainbow of birds, from scrub jays to roadrunners. We put out a wet welcome mat in the form of a shallow steel pan of water, which was used mostly by birds for bathing. The pan was usually three-quarters full the next morning.
    In the past decade, the “pan index” has changed. Our central Arizona highlands typically receive nearly twenty inches of precipitation annually, but in many of the past ten years we have received significantly less. Foothills and grasslands once glittered with natural catch basins year-round; most are now dry. It is possible to wander twenty thousand square miles of central and northern Arizona and scarcely get your boots wet.
    While some pundits wag their tongues to deny that humans are a causative factor in global climate change, the tongues of the wild creatures in our midst lap at our water