#aleutian

L'Officiel octobre 1958 N°439-440

A model wears a Saga mink coat from the Aleutian Islands. By Jacques Rober. Photo P.de Harambure.

The indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and Russia, the Aleuts (Unangan, Unungas) are a group whose traditional territory spans America and Asia.

The Aleut live in partially underground houses known as barabaras, with multiple families living in a single barabara. They remain primarily hunter-gatherer-fisherpeople.

Visual arts of the Aleut include baidarkas (Aleutian kayaks for hunting), weaving, embroidery, and mask making. In particular, masks are used to portray figures from oral history and religion. The masks were carved wood, decorated with paint, feathers, and other natural products.

The Aleut used tattoos and piercings, especially facial markings, for religious and cultural reasons. As people who lived in possibly the harshed climate in the world, the clothing was beautiful and incredibly effective. They used the natural water repulsion of animal skins to create hooded parkas that remain unparalleled for cold, snowy climates.

Basket with Lid

ARTIST CULTURE: Aleutian

DATE: early to mid-20th century

MATERIAL: Vegetal fiber and pigment

PROBABLY MADE IN: Alaska, Arctic and Subarctic, United States, North and Central America

Provenience unknown, possibly looted

The Bering Sea

Sandwiched between the long chain of the Aleutian Islands forming the Alaskan Peninsula, Russia and mainland Alaska, this frigid and wild patch of sea is an area with a diverse and productive biosphere, partly fed by the nutrients ground out of the rocks during the ice age and ferried into the sea by rivers and calving glaciers. The sea contains a deep water zone, with relics of a long disappeared oceanic plate called the Kula and an area of continental shelf in its northern reaches, and areas of shallowly submerged continental shelf. Its boreal reaches culminate in the Bering Strait that separates the two continents, linking the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. During the ice age it was a land bridge, much like the English channel, across which people and animals moved.

It was named after the Danish explorer and navigator who first explored it on behalf of the Russian Tsars, back in the days when the land from Alaska down to the Russian river in Northern California were part of their empire (a sale I bet they later regretted, as the French must have done the Louisiana sale).

The sea is filled by powerful currents, which mix nutrients and churn them around, as revealed by this bloom of phytoplankton snapped by NASA's Aqua satellite, though they've been present for months. These little green photosynthesisers are the base of the food chain, and congregate where shallow and deep waters meet. Sadly the sea's productivity is decreasing for a host of reasons, including overexploitation and global warming, and the rich fisheries it now supports may follow the cod of the Grand Banks into gradual disappearance.

Loz

Imaged is Mt. Herbert (front) and Mt. Cleveland (back) within the Aleutian Chain in Alaska. 

Upon seeing this sight, the photographer stated that "It was real, and more beautiful than I could have ever imagined". 

Gravity Waves from above

Astronaut Alexander Gerst captured this photo above the Aleutian Islands from the International Space Station. This is a remarkably cool look at gravity waves in the Earth’s atmosphere.

A gravity wave is a wave where gravity is the restoring force. These waves are the result of winds running into the islands. When that happens, air is pushed upward over the land, but that disturbs the atmosphere above.

The atmosphere is separated into layers, so if air is pushed upward, it will eventually run into a layer that it can’t penetrate. Instead, when the air is pushed up, it causes the boundaries between layers to oscillate up and down. These boundaries often occur at the levels where clouds form, so when the air is driven up over the islands, it creates waves where clouds are present and then missing.

For this to happen across an entire island chain, the wind direction would have to be very consistent across the entire region. This truly is a remarkable photo.

-JBB

Image credit: https://twitter.com/Astro_Alex/status/511805315000832000