At the Time of Whaling
Gambell, Alaska is a Yupik-speaking community on St. Lawrence Island on the Bering
Sea. Here, as on the coast, sea mammals are still the major source of food. During
their three-week Spring migration through the Bering Channel, whales are hunted using
a combination of traditional organization and recently introduced technology such
as motors and darting guns. A bowhead whale weighs about one ton per foot, and may
reach seventy feet in length. Working together, even fifteen Eskimo skin boats with
up to ten persons on each boat cannot assure a safe venture or the taking of a whale.
From a rooftop several men with binoculars view the sea ice for open water and other
signs of migrating whales. Conditions are good as the men hoist their sails. Someone
spots a whale and shouts the news through the CB radio, and the other boats drop sail,
rev up their motors, and join the first boat. Together the fifteen boats capture the
whale and tow it to the shore ice, where the men begin the three-day task of butchering
and distributing the meat to the crew and to another village on the island. An old
man recounts the way whaling used to be.