For generations, Yupik and Inupiat hunters have depended on the Pacific walrus., says nytimes.com. They ate the walrus’ meat and whittled its bones into tools. Walrus skin covered their boats, and walrus intestines, stitched into raincoats, covered their backs. Today, the walrus is still an important part of the subsistence diet in villages along Alaska’s Chukchi and Bering sea coasts, and Native Alaskans sell handcrafts made from walrus ivory. more »

According to theglobeandmail.com , an iceberg the size of four Manhattan islands – the largest Arctic iceberg in half a century – broke away from a Greenland glacier last week. It could generate invaluable new information on climate change, scientists say.

more »

Last week a vast block of ice broke off from the Greenland ice sheet, creating the largest iceberg to form off the country in nearly 50 years, says nytimes.com more »

According to montrealgazette.com, Arctic sea ice remains headed for another severe thaw this summer, tracking close to 2007′s record-setting retreat as some of the polar region’s oldest and thickest slabs — driven south into the warmer waters of the Beaufort Sea — are “beginning to melt out,” according to the latest report from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. more »

According to mirror.co.uk,   huge ice island is floating free in Arctic waters after splitting from the Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland. University of Delaware researcher Andreas Muenchow announced the calving took place in the early morning of August 5 and amounts to the largest ice chunk lost in the Arctic since 1962. It measures 100 square miles and 625 feet thick. The National Ice Center provides a satellite image and map here. more »

According to msnbc.msn.com, after more than a year of drilling through ice in one of the harshest environments on earth, scientists in Greenland hit bedrock more than 8,300 feet below the surface of the Arctic island’s vast ice sheet last week. more »

The Arctic sea ice extent averaged for July was the second lowest in the satellite record, after 2007, according to the latest figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), says favstocks.com more »

According to ouramazingplanet.com,a one-of-a-kind study of marine life is under way, made possible by an autonomous, torpedo-shaped robot that recently took its first dive beneath the Arctic sea ice. more »