The purpose of this web page is to look at the knowledge acquired by traditional users of the sea ice. This will be done in a geophysical frame. In other words I will present phenomena and ice types observed by Inuit hunters and travellers and then explore the geophysics behind these topics. Not all of the terms listed will be treated in this manner. Most will simply be defined in terms of the current western nomenclature in use by scientists who study sea ice.
Both the scientist studying the ice and a hunter using the ice observe the same environment. They do, however, have different motivations behind studying the evolution of the sea ice. Most sea ice geophysicists today are studying the ice for its role in global climate systems or for its impact on ocean shipping. A hunter on the ice needs to know as much as possible about sea ice in order to exploit the resources it has to offer (mainly animals and potable water) and to safely return from his travel offshore. In addition to that, someone who lives in Barrow or Wainwright and travels on the sea ice daily or weekly has the opportunity to make a more continuous and complete set of observations than an infrequent visitor to the area. The point of this is that the observations made by each of these groups of people will likely vary. But they are observing the same events and should be able to come up with compatible observations and explanations of the same phenomena.
The majority of the information gleaned for this project came from several books written by Richard Nelson (Alaskan Eskimo exploitation of the sea ice environment. Fairbanks : Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, Aerospace Medical Division, Air Force Systems Command, 1966; Alaskan eskimo exploitation of the summer sea ice environment. Fort Wainwright, Alaska, Arctic Aeromedical Laboratory, 1968?; Hunters of the northern ice. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1969). Nelson lived in Wainwright, Alaska for a total of a year, observing and participating in the hunts on the ice. He compiled an anthropological record of the Inuit exploitation of the sea ice. This research was funded by the U.S. Air Force. As a result of this, the terms I list here and the techniques described are those of the Northwestern Alaskan Inuits as of the mid-1960's. Due to language variations among the Inuit as well as the variations in sea ice due to local geography and weather patterns, some of this may not apply to other regions such as the Hudson Bay or Greenland. Another result of my reliance on a single source of information is that any interpretations made by Nelson will show up here.
With all that said, feel free to delve in...