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| While glaciers melt around the port of Ilulissat, its fishing industry is thriving. Colin Woodard |
In Greenland, potatoes thrive as seal hunting wanes
Global warming is a boon for farmers and fishermen but a hardship for ice-dependent Inuit.
from the October 1, 2007 edition
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But even in northern Greenland, the sea hasn't frozen solidly for nearly a decade, effectively isolating thousands of Greenlanders for half the year and wiping out the livelihoods of hundreds more subsistence hunters who pursued seals and polar bears on the ice.
In the far north, the sea ice lasts two months less than in the past, according to Aleqa Hammond, Greenland's minister for finance and foreign affairs. "For the communities in the north who live solely off hunting and fishing, it's like your boss taking away your pay for a couple of months without giving you notice," she says. Two years ago, the government had to airlift food for sled dogs whose owners, lacking scraps from seal hunting, were unable to feed them.
The loss goes beyond economics. "Dog sledding is part of north Greenlanders' identity," Rosing explains. "You go to a village in north Greenland and it's like a sports car and a status symbol. If you come cruising by with your top 12 trim sled dogs then, well, you're that kind of guy."
In Ilulissat, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, many dog owners are giving up. For now hundreds of sled dogs are tied up in a rocky field on the outskirts of town, fed on fish scraps. Their long-term prospects appear bleak.
The town, though, is thriving. The two fish plants on the waterfront operate nonstop, processing the shrimp and halibut local fishermen catch among the icebergs just outside the harbor entrance. "Ilulissat is a boom town," says local artist Karl Petersen, citing new housing developments planned in the outskirts and the increasing number of tourists coming to see the rapidly decomposing glacier in the adjacent fjord. "There are only a handful of subsistence hunters left now, and they do it just as a hobby."
Still, nobody knows for sure the long-term effects of Greenland's warming climate. Scientists expect that warmer sea temperatures will drive shrimp farther north, where they are less accessible, but they may be replaced by other species. Melting glacial ice may prove good for the country's expanding hydroelectric industry, but thinning sea ice is already claiming lives of people who rely on it for transportation.
Even in the south, the weather is proving a mixed bag. On the Qassiarsuk town landing stand a number of refrigerator-sized plastic-wrapped parcels – hay shipped in for local farmers' sheep. "In the beginning of the summer we had very dry weather, and the grass did not grow," explains Kiista Isaksen, mayor of the municipality of Narsaq, of which Qassiarsuk is a part. "Now it's raining too much."
[Editor's note:
A photo caption in the original version misstated when potatoes were first grown in Greenland.]
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