Dead walruses found on northwest Alaska beach

American Fish and Wildlife Service researchers recently accessed a felony analysis into your loss of life of 25 walruses stylish headless carcasses were really found on an Alaska seashore.

The animals, 13 adults and 12 calves, were found last week in Cape Lisburne, located on the Chukchi Sea coast near the small northwest Alaskan town of Point Hope.

Twenty-five walruses corpses were discovered on the shores of Cape Lisburne, a remote coastal area in far northwestern Alaska. Some are missing tusks.

In Alaska particularly, native hunters who kill walruses must only do so for subsistence purposes or to make handicrafts, said the organization on its website. However, killing these animals only for their tusks, also called “head hunting”, is illegal, across the board. “Federal regulations allow anyone to collect bones, teeth and ivory of dead marine mammals found on beaches or land within a quarter-mile of the ocean, though they must follow certain rules”, says CBS Seattle.

The cause of death has not been determined, said Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Andrea Medeiros, and investigators do not want to speculate.

“We do not think such a measure is needed at this time”, Haskett said in the letter to Rick Steiner of Oasis Earth. Walrus skulls with tusk attached are collectors’ items. Walrus killed exclusively for ivory with the meat wasted is illegal.

One possibility, for instance, is that the walruses died at sea and were washed ashore, said Ms. Medeiros. A second group of walrus was found dead last week near Point Lay, about 100 miles northeast of Cape Lisburne.

But since 2007, absence of sea ice in summer and fall has forced thousands of walruses to the Point Lay shoreline haulout. Arctic sea ice hit its summer minimum last week at 1.7 million square miles, down 240,000 square miles from 2014, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Walruses in large numbers on shore were first spotted on the USA side of the Chukchi Sea in 2007.

The fate of the walruses has become a reason for worry as climate warming reduces summer sea ice and the polar ice cap draws back beyond the shallow outer continental shelf across water too deep for walruses to catch clams and snails on the bottom of the ocean. They can be crushed to death when a herd stampedes due to disturbances from polar bears, people, aircraft or boat traffic.

In a press release on Thursday, the agency said that an employee of the US Geological Survey gave an image of the walrus carcasses.