Craig George鈥檚 remarkable northern legacy

Ned Rozell
907-474-7468
July 14, 2023

A man in winter gear stands on a snowmachine on an expanse of snowy sea ice.
Photo by Ned Rozell
Craig George leads Ned Rozell on a snowmachine trail north of Utqiagvik in May 2010.

I was sad to learn recently that Craig George was missing and presumed dead when a raft he was floating upon hit a logjam in the Chulitna River on July 5. The Chulitna flows south from Broad Pass in the 有料盒子视频 Range. George had run that river many times.

George, 70 at the time of the accident, was an icon of northern science, having lived much of his life in Barrow, now Utqiavik, the northernmost community in the United States. The retired biologist with the North Slope Borough was a world expert on bowhead whales who had the respect of scientists worldwide and the residents in his adopted town.

I once visited Utqiavik to research a book about a permafrost scientist. After George answered my questions about Kenji Yoshikawa (who once arrived there in a sailboat from Japan), George asked me if I wanted to go count whales with him.

He then toted me by snowmachine over the infinite sea ice, carrying me the farthest north I鈥檝e ever been and giving me my first glimpse of a polar bear. 

Following is a story I wrote about that trip 鈥 and that exceptional man 鈥 in 2010: 

A man in winter gear carrying a rifle climbs a ridge of ice with a snow-block structure at the top. A canvas sheet rises above the snow blocks.
Photo by Ned Rozell
Craig George looks at polar bear tracks near an observing 鈥減erch鈥 he and other biologists built on sea ice north of Utqiagvik in May 2010. The canvas on top is wrapped around two-by-fours to break the wind.

OFF POINT BARROW 鈥 鈥淲e鈥檙e a long ways offshore,鈥 Craig George says. 鈥淭he water beneath us is about 180 feet deep.鈥

In late May, a chilly breeze cuts from the west as we stand on a platform of bluish white sea ice. 鈥淭he Perch,鈥 a whale-watching tower located on a snowmachine cul de sac at the top of North America, is a small castle made of ice chunks and an impressive amount of labor. 

George, fellow biologist Leslie Pierce and I are at the ragged edge of sea ice that clings to the northern coast. Eiders, sea ducks almost as large as geese, bark in the cool air above the open water a few hundred yards ahead of us; the first loons to arrive this far north zip by on their way to summer.

George, a biologist with the North Slope Borough, located the Perch here so he and other biologists could count bowhead whales as they arc over the continent while migrating from the Chukchi to Beaufort seas. He and Pierce are pulling a four-hour watch from the Perch for the final time in a spring season during which Barrow whaling teams have harvested 14 bowhead whales.

Bowheads are magnificent creatures that may reach 100 tons and spend their long lives in cold northern waters. As discovered by George and others, some bowheads swimming by today may have also been passing this point when Thomas Jefferson slept in the White House.

Few people know as much about Balaena mysticetus as George. He migrated to Barrow in the late 1970s and has studied the creatures since 1980, a time when scientists knew little about bowheads. The animals are so important for northern Indigenous cultures that people evolved around using bowhead bodies for food, bowhead oil to light their lamps and bowhead bones to build shelters from the cold and constant wind.

George 鈥 tanned, solid and rugged as a walrus 鈥 recently completed his doctorate at the University of 有料盒子视频 Fairbanks. With his 168-page thesis, he has condensed three decades of accompanying Inupiat hunters while they harvested whales and has refined his experiences into insights on bowhead biology. Here are a few highlights:

Bowheads can go without eating for more than one year (1,000 times longer than a mouse, he notes).

Bowheads can live to 200 years old in part because the whales evolved in cold water without much food. 鈥淭hese stressors may have led to slow growth, delayed maturity and subsequently extended longevity to ensure reproductive success,鈥 George wrote.

So efficient is the bowhead鈥檚 foot of blubber insulation that bowhead skin temperatures are about equal to the surrounding frigid ocean, while their internal temperature remains about 33.7 degrees Celsius (92.7 degrees F).

Bowheads have an incredible system for shedding excess heat that involves the flukes of the tail, the roof of the mouth and a bowhead鈥檚 pickup truck-size tongue. 鈥淭he body temperatures for pursued whales . . . were not elevated. In fact, the lowest temperature was for the whale pursued (by whale hunters) the longest,鈥 George wrote.

A man in a blue winter hat and coat speaks on a cell phone. A set of binoculars hangs around his neck and another sits on a plywood box in the foreground, along with a stack of green plastic cups. A white canvas sheet strung along a rope forms a backdrop.
Photo by Ned Rozell
Craig George talks on a cellphone with his wife Cyd Hanns while he takes a break from glassing for migrating bowhead whales north of Utqiagvik in May 2010.

Back on the Perch, it is a slow day for bowhead watching. Curtains of fog open and close above the open water through which the bowheads are swimming. George, Pierce and another watcher saw 18 whales yesterday, along with a polar bear that padded within a few dozen feet of the Perch before wandering off. We see neither whales nor bears at the Perch today (though the bears will appear for us later at a pile of whale bones near Point Barrow).

After deciding to dismantle the canvas windbreak material from around the Perch, George scribbles the day鈥檚 result in his notebook. On ice steps sprinkled with gravel to enhance grip, George and Pierce descend from the Perch for the final time in 2010 (they often complete the spring whale count in late May). Soon, the sea ice that supports it will melt, and that impressive structure will vanish.

In a few hours, George will return to his office north of Barrow and enter his data from another year of routing snowmachine trails through sea ice, building towers from ice blocks, shooing off polar bears and standing in greasy boots alongside village whaling captains as they process their catch. For all his knowledge on bowhead whales, George in his thesis wrote that he would have learned much less without the people whose ancestors were hunting the whales right here when Jesus Christ was walking the other end of the planet.

鈥淭he Eskimo whale hunters, captains and crews deserve great credit 鈥 perhaps singular credit 鈥 as without their support this research would have been impossible. They supported me in the field, fed me maktak (blubber), offered ideas and supported the Department鈥檚 seemingly esoteric research for 30 years. They taught me more whale biology than I will ever teach them.鈥

Since the late 1970s, the University of 有料盒子视频 Fairbanks' Geophysical Institute has provided this column free in cooperation with the 有料盒子视频 research community. Ned Rozell is a science writer for the Geophysical Institute.