by Nadia Teskrat

The residents of this island village eat dried seal meat, sell animal skins and hop on snowmobiles to hunt down polar bears and caribou.

But the age-old traditions of Shishmaref are threatened by global warming, which has already forced the 600 residents to vote to move to the continent as the sea chips away at the village's eroding shore.

The receding ice in the Arctic will cause certain animals such as polar bears, walruses and seals to become rare, according to Robert Corell, who wrote a study on climate change's impact on the Arctic.

Caribou and reindeer could also become more scarce, he said in the "Arctic Climate Impact Assessment."

"Climate change in the Arctic is a human and cultural, as well as an environmental issue," Corell said in the study.

Shishmaref's residents, who are mostly Inupiaq natives, live off fishing and hunting.

Flies have become a problem as they swarm on meat hanging in drying racks.

"There are more different kinds of flies than before," said Tony Weyiouanna, a town official. "It's very bad. ... We can't hang meat in certain parts of the year like we used to, so we have to freeze them."

In September, before the storm season, the hunters chase foxes, seals and other animals that are protected by the federal government and that only Native Alaskans can hunt.

Once killed, the animals are cut up on the tundra. The skins dry on racks before they are tanned. The hunters cover themselves with the skins, which are also sold in cities or made into traditional clothes.

"Our subsistence lifestyle is very strong, we still hunt traditionally," said village resident Ardith Weyiouanna.

The Shishmaref diet is heavy on animal fat, whose nutritional value is essential for the body in one of the coldest places on Earth.

Weyiouanna's pantry is filled with sticks of smoked salmon and dried seal, which was drained of its oil and which in turn will be used for cooking.

On her table recently, she cut up a piece of caribou after taking out the fat, which she fries.

The whiskered walrus is also part of the menu in Shishmaref. The large animal is buried in the sand for fermentation. Its skin and fat will become delicacies.

Weyiouanna likes to make "ice cream" made with caribou fat and seal oil.

The former school assistant and her 70-year-old husband Johnny have seven children, 11 grandchildren and one great-grandson. All live in Shishmaref except a daughter who lives in the mainland city of Anchorage.

Their 43-year-old son Perry, who like many Shishmaref residents is unemployed, makes some money selling mammoth fossils that wash up from the sea.

He hasn't been as lucky as his neighbor, who found a three-meter long, 350-kilogram mammoth tusk and sold it for 20,000 dollars, Perry said.

The residents of Shishmaref also make money carving sculptures with animal tusks and whale bones.

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