This camp along the shore of the Chukchi Sea almost looks like an ocean going vessel, the cabin itself the wheelhouse, a flag marking the vessel’s bow as it faces a fall sea. Snow but no ice, you can see how the ravenous ocean eats at the shoreline of tiny Sarichef Island. All this will be gone one day… perhaps in not so many years. October 31, 2010
It is reported that since 1969, the ocean has eaten away 200 feet of land along the coast of already tiny Sarichef Island where Shishmaref is located. In the past, a sheet of ice forming in fall and lasting through spring kept the Chukchi sea blanketed and calm. Warming sea temperatures in the Arctic mean the ocean is freezing later. When fall and winter storms occur, packing winds that have traveled uninterrupted over thousands of miles of open sea, the surf thus generated claws at the barrier island without mercy. Particularly violent storms can rip away massive chunks of land. Entire homes have been washed away, a fate this abandoned house appears to be facing. Photograph: October 10, 2010
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