14 



NORTH AMERICAN FAUNA 74 



A large part of the walrus population passes northward through Bering Strait 

 in May, and in some years the xanguard may advance as far as Barrow. 

 Apparently, the bulk of the population still is situated between St. Lawrence 

 Island and Bering Strait, although the scarcity of data from the Gulf of Anadyr 

 and from the Chukchi Sea west of 170°W precludes documentation of 

 movements into those areas. Probably there are large numbers in the northern 

 Gulf of Anadyr (cf. Fig. 9), but they may be widely dispersed, for only small 

 groups have been sighted west of 175° W (G. A. Fedoseev, personal communica- 

 tion). Because the ice north of Bering Strait is considerably more compact in the 

 west than in the east, migrants probably are scarce in the southwestern Chukchi 

 Sea at this time. 



The northernmost records near Barrow w^ere obtained during a transit to that 

 area from the south by the icebreaker Northwind in 1954 (R. A. Ryder, personal 

 communication) . The southern maxima in the Bering Sea include groups sighted 

 on the Kors ak coast in 1964 and 1979 (Kosygin and Sobolevskii 1971; G. A. 

 Fedoseev, personal communication) and at Cape Glazenap and Unimak Island, 

 near the southwestern end of the Alaska Peninsula (K. W. Kenyon and C. A. 

 Smith, personal communication). Extralimital records, outside the Bering Sea, 

 were of a young female on the Yamsk Islands in the northeastern Okhotsk Sea in 

 1940 (Moiseev 1951 in Heptner et al. 1976), one in False Pass in 1979 (R. Tre- 

 maine, personal communication), three in Chignik Lagoon in 1979, one in 

 Shelikof Strait, west of Kodiak Island in 1979 (C. A. Smith, personal 

 communication), and single animals in upper Cook Inlet in 1955 and 1979 (L. 

 Temple and K. W. Pitcher, personal communication). 



June (Fig. 9) 



The rafted remnants of the winter pack in the Bering Sea continue to diminish 

 through melting, and by the end of June little ice remains except in the Gulf of 

 Anadyr and just east of St. Lawrence Island. However, north of Bering Strait, in 

 the Chukchi Sea, the pack remains more or less intact. In addition to the broad 

 flaw along the northwestern Alaskan coast, another begins to open along the 

 northern coast of Chukotka, providing an avenue for dispersal of walruses 

 toward Wrangell Island. 



In June, most of the remainder of the population moves northward through 

 Bering Strait, mainly along the rafted ice that extends to that area from the 

 eastern end of St. Lawrence Island. At the same time, the vanguard in the 

 western Chukchi Sea has dispersed to the vicinity of Long Strait and Wrangell 

 Island. Unfortunately, there are no data to indicate the pattern of that dispersal. 

 Several thousand animals, principally males, appear at this time also in the 

 northern Gulf of Anadyr and in Bristol Bay, where they will remain for the 

 summer. In some years, large groups have been sighted also along the Koryak 

 coast, from Cape Navarin to Karagin Gulf, and along the Alaskan coast from 

 Kuskokwim Bay to Norton Sound. 



The northernmost records in this month are of individuals on the southern 

 coast of Banks Island, Northwest Territories (Harington 1966) and near the 

 northwestern coast of Wrangell Island (Nikulin 1941). The southernmost records 

 in the Bering Sea are from the Commander Islands (Chugunkov 1970 in Kosygin 

 and Sobolevskii 1971) and Amak Island (J. Sarvis, personal communication). 



