- [Narrator] Since time immemorial,
that's when the polar ice used to reach us.
Kulusiq, the mother ice.
Gulusik was the one that set the winter
and it brought with it abundance
of whales, seals, marine mammals.
I started going out in the ocean with my dad,
about six or seven years old.
We couldn't wait to go out to be with the elder men
and face the ocean.
- [Jerry] My dad taught me how to hunt and fish
when I was a very young boy.
He took me way out in the ocean
and he taught me how to ugruk hunt.
I got scared.
I looked up at my dad and he wasn't scared.
So I haven't been scared ever since.
- We would go out, roughly 30 miles out from here,
and you can hear walrus from a long way.
They have very poor eyesight.
They could smell you, so you always went downwind.
In the old days, there'd be hundreds on a piece of ice.
I always tried to find one or two that were by themselves.
They could be a pretty dangerous animal.
- [Clyde] And I felt privileged to be out there
with my dad and his brothers,
to be able to provide for our family and our people.
But little did we know this change that was coming.
(ominous music)
(chattering)
- My lifecycle basically begins in January.
So, in January we have muskox, we also have moose.
Then, that time of year,
the crabbing in the ocean starts.
- I have fish eggs, muskox, walrus.
- [Tom] April and May, I'm bear hunting.
End of May, the ducks come.
Beginning of June, the trout start running in the river
and we'll cut 100 trout to put in seal oil.
At the end of June, the salmon show up.
- Cranberries, blueberries -
- In August, we'll do 100 to 200 silvers
in the smokehouse.
- Salmon berries, rhubarb -
For nine whole months, nine whole solid months
the whole of the Bering Sea would be completely locked up.
Now we're down to three.
- The ice is coming later and leaving earlier.
We probably won't have freeze-up maybe till January,
but it's still too unsafe to go out on the ice.
- The biggest thing I've seen out of this climate change
is we have a east wind.
East wind is always a warm wind, 30 above, 20 above.
East wind brings warm weather.
We need that 20, 30 below, to create the foundation
for us to operate on the platform.
- [Matthew] In the Bering Sea region,
sea ice is an extension of the land.
It provides a platform for, for whaling, for travel.
It enables them to hunt and to access food in the ocean
that would be much more difficult to access otherwise.
- [Jerry] And this is the tomcod fishing that happens,
and as you can see, there is plenty.
Beluga, ugruk hunting.
One of our elders butchering a caribou.
(gentle piano music)
- We've lost over 70% of the entire volume
of Arctic sea ice.
- Ice used to be like eight to 10 feet thick.
Nowadays, it's like 1.5 feet, two feet thick.
- Chop a hole in the ice
and throw some salmon eggs in there,
and we pull out trout and white fish and grayling.
But if it's melting a lot earlier,
then that opportunity goes away.
- We can't venture out on the ice,
even if it comes up to our island.
It's not solid, so we can risk going out on the ice.
- [Matthew] Many communities
use shore fast ice for whaling,
but they also rely on the pack ice.
- [Tom] Even in mid March I'm looking for ice
as far out in the ocean as I can go,
and that's not normal,
- [Matthew] At the Arctic scale,
we've lost over 40% of ice extent in the summer.
- You know, 2,000 pound animal,
to try to pull them up on ice with the four guys,
it's so much easier to go after them
while they're on the ice.
It's getting more dangerous to go get 'em.
- Walrus has been our most powerful ally for survival.
The tusks were used for tools,
hunting, harpoon heads, spearheads, arrowheads,
and the skin was used for food.
The female walrus skin was used for skin boats.
- You know, half a ton of meat, blubber and food,
and that'll feed a whole village, man.
- Our food resource has always been
within close proximity to our villages
so that we didn't have to spend a lot of money
to go fill our freezers.
- What's gonna be on the breakfast table tomorrow,
in a week's time, will we have enough food
to feed our family, to feed our community,
to feed our children, our elders?
- The other thing that the ice provides
is a platform for sea-ice algae.
- When it forms in the winter,
it's like a playground, and a living playground
for plankton and zooplankton.
- [Gay] The krill eat the algae,
the fish eat the krill,
the seals eat the krill,
the murres eat the fish.
- Without the ice, we're losing all that.
And we're starting to see a lot of birds
and even some sea mammals starve. Just this summer.
I counted 20 young baby ugruks from the spring
that had starved to death.
Our garden is dying.
- One thing about the native population,
is they adapt very well.
You know, if the salmon go away,
they replaced that with something else.
And if the ducks aren't coming,
they'll find something else.
Instead of waiting till May to go hunting,
I'm hunting in April and March.
- I think we're facing a different kind of change
that we haven't really seen before.
I think, you know, if the crabs go,
or if the beluga whales go and we don't see them,
if the seals don't come back here, how do we adapt?
I don't know that we can.
- My ancestors say that we've been
on that island for over 10,000 years.
What is very powerfully painful to me
is that as we're losing our age
old way of life literally melting away,
our identity is being lost.
But we're still here.
We're still who we are.
(slow piano music)