September 22, 2026 — It’s September on the Arctic coast of Alaska, and the whaling crews of Utqiagvik (Barrow), Alaska, have been busy.
“The weather has gotten bad, so I finally have a little time,” says Martin Edwardsen, co-captain of Harry Brower Jr.’s crew. “It’s the Little Kupaaq crew,” he says.
Edwardsen also serves as executive director of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission (AEWC), formed in 1977 to regulate subsistence whaling for 11 Inupiaq villages under the auspices of the International Whaling Commission (IWC). “So far we have gotten five bowhead whales this year,” says Edwardsen. “We got one in the spring season, and we have gotten four so far this fall season.”
The Little Kupaaq crew harpooned a big bowhead about 28 miles offshore on September 9. “They weigh about a ton per foot,” says Edwardsen. “The one our crew got was 55 feet. It took about four hours to get it to our butchering station.”
Unlike the harpoon cannons used on industrial whaling boats that operate in defiance of the IWC, the Inupiaq whalers throw their harpoons by hand. “We call our harpoon a darting gun,” says Edwardsen. “It has a trigger that, when it hits the whale, shoots a penthrite bomb into the whale’s vital organs; the bomb has a trigger that lights a fuse inside it, so it explodes inside the whale.” Edwardsen adds that the darting gun also includes a toggle harpoon head that embeds in the whales and separates from the shaft. “That has a line on it, and we attach an A3 or A5 float to that so we can follow the whale.”