TOOTHWALKERS: GIANTS OF THE ARCTIC ICE presents extremely rare under-the-ice footage that reveals a complex and potentially dangerous side to this huge and often mysterious mammal.

Filmmakers Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson, who are husband and wife, have been studying the giant saber-toothed Arctic walrus for five years. To put his diving skills to use in learning about the walrus’s other existence — the one hidden deep below massive sheets of ice — Ravetch and Robertson accompany an Inuit hunting party in its arduous and hazardous quest for the food that will carry the Inuits and their dogs through the winter.

Clumsy as the walrus appears to be on land and ice, the animal is a majestic and extremely formidable creature in the water. The Inuits have learned this from experience — more than one hunter has been attacked in the water from below and dragged to his death in a crushing embrace.

Online content for Grand Canyon was originally posted November 2000.

Producer
RONNIE GODEANU

Art Director
SABINA DALEY

Designers
LENNY DROZNER
KAREN MATTSON
RADIK SHVARTS

Pagebuilding
BRIAN SANTALONE

Writer
KAREN DE SEVE

Production Artist
RUIYAN XU

Technical Director
BRIAN LEE

Scientific Consultant
GIANNA SAVOIE

Thirteen Online is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York’s Kravis Multimedia Education Center in New York City. Anthony Chapman, Director of Interactive & Broadband. Bob Adleman, Business Manager. Carmen DiRienzo, Vice President and Managing Director, Corporate Affairs.

Television Credits

Directed by
ADAM RAVETCH

Written & Produced by
SARAH ROBERTSON

Director of Photography
ROB GARRARD

Editor
LORENZO MASSA

Production Manager
CARRIE MADU

Additional Camera Operators
ALAIN SAINT HILAIRE
SARAH ROBERTSON

Remote Operating Vehicle Provided by
HARDSUITS INC.

Remote Operating Vehicle Technician
JEFF HEATON

Support Diver
MARIO CYR

Legal Affairs
LAURIE McINNES

Production Accountant
JANA LUMSDEN

Sound Editor
TONY LANCETT

Sound Mixer
MIKE LIOTTA

Post Production Facilities
MAGNETIC SOUTH
MAGNETIC NORTH
MASTERS WORKSHOP

Thanks to the Communities of
ARCTIC BAY, NWT
IGLOOLIK, NWT
CORAL HARBOR, NWT

Northern Consultants
FRANK MAY
BRAD PARKER
GLEN WILLIAMS

Outfitters
IGLOOLIK OUTDOOR EQUIPMENT RENTALS
KAJJAARNAQ ARCTIC TOURS
NIGLASUK CO. LTD

Scientific Advisors
HAROLD WELCH
CANADIAN DEPARTMENT OF FISHERIES & OCEAN
BECKY SJARE
SUE COZENS

Executive Producers
JONATHAN GRUPPER
ANDY THOMPSON
BERNARD MACLEOD

Thanks to:
ENERGY PRODUCTIONS
VINCE PACE
JERRY SHAPIRO
HYDROSPHERE
TAM AKKITTIRQ
COMPLETE FILM & VIDEO
TAM DIVE
TONY GASTON
FIRST AIR
CANADIAN AIRLINES
AMPHIBICO

Toothwalkers wishes to give Special Acknowledgment to:
NIKON INC.
ROLEX WATCHES USA
ALAIN SAINT HILAIRE
PADI FOUNDATION
PADI PROJECT AWARE
PACE TECHNOLOGY
DACOR
VIKING

For NATURE

Narration Written by
SUSANE LEE

Science Editor
JANET HESS

Original Music by
MICHAEL WHALEN

Coordinating Producer
JANICE YOUNG

Producer
JESSICA SIEGEL

Associate Producer
JILL CLARKE

Researcher
HILDY RUBIN

Production Assistants
KEVIN DOYLE
PATTY JACOBSON

Manager
EILEEN FRAHER

Production Manager
JOHN SCHWALLY

Videotape Editors
BARRY GLINER
CHRISTOPHER SEWARD

Audio Mix
ED CAMPBELL

Supervising Producer
BILL MURPHY

Executive Editor
GEORGE PAGE

Executive Producer
FRED KAUFMAN

A SARAH ROBERTSON & GREAT NORTH PRODUCTIONS INC. PRODUCTION in association with Thirteen/WNET New York, Discovery Channel Canada, Docstar, and Canal D with the assistance of The Canada Television & Cable Production Fund and The Government of Canada — Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit Program

This program was produced by Thirteen/WNET New York,
which is solely responsible for its content.

NATURE: Arctic Oasis: Eco-Explorer
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/arcticoasis/ecoexplorer.html
Explore Nunavut, the Canadian Arctic territory where “Toothwalkers” was filmed.

Arctic Adventure
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/fun/arctic_check.html
Discover the marine mamals of the region.

Ravetch Underwater Films
http://members.aol.com/ravetch/
The filmmaker’s home page, with several clips from his wildlife documentaries.

OneWorld Magazine: Nanook of the North
http://www.oneworldmagazine.org/seek/nanook/
A hyperlinked article about the film.

Arctic Circle
http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/
Large, varied site dedicated to the region, with articles, links, and maps.

Walrus
http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Walrus/home.html
Basic information about the walrus with links and activities.

Books

———- “Feature Creature: The Walrus.” WILDLIFE CONSERVATION, September/October 1997, p. 60.

Chivers, C. J. “The Hunt is On.” WILDLIFE CONSERVATION, September/October 1997, p. 36.

Reijnders, Peter J.H. SEALS, FUR SEALS, SEA LIONS, AND WALRUSES.  Cambridge, England: IUCN/SSC Seal Specialist Group, 1993.

Riedman, Marianne. THE PINNIPEDS: SEALS, SEA LIONS, AND WALRUSES. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Sage, Bryan. THE ARCTIC AND ITS WILDLIFE. New York: Facts on File Publications, 1986.

On an individual basis, rescuing orphaned walrus calves from the wild is a good way for biologists to learn more about this species. Five such orphans live at New York’s Aquarium for Wildlife Conservation. The oldest, named Nuka, which means “little sister” in the Inuit language, is 15 years old. She was found near the town of Barrow on the northern tip of Alaska. Ten years later, from the same region, the Aquarium adopted another young walrus, Tiipaq, or “little girl who came from the country to the city.” Three more youngsters, Ayveq, Uupa, and Kulusiq, were all orphaned as infants when their mothers were killed during an annual hunt in 1994. “If the mother dies, the orphan can’t be fed, and the baby dies,” explained Dr. Hans Walters, Animal Department Supervisor at the Aquarium.

Uncontrolled oil exploration may endanger walrus habitats.

Uncontrolled oil exploration may endanger walrus habitats. According to Walters, these calves were 120-pound wrinkly puppies when they arrived. They needed 24-hour care, and had to be bottle-fed for two years. Now these walruses weigh nearly 1,000 pounds each and eat between 40 and 60 pounds of food a day. Besides providing the right diet for these large carnivores, Walters said the biggest challenge is keeping the animals mentally stimulated. “In the wild, they would spend almost their entire waking time looking for food,” he explained. The keepers train the walruses to fetch and wave, which are fun activities, but which also serve a purpose. “The presenting of the foot and open mouth is basically a veterinary exam,” said Walters. “It’s a simple way of looking at the animal to make sure its mouth is okay and the flipper is okay.” However, Walters admitted that the walrus wave is a real crowd-pleaser as well.

Besides the occasional polar bear or killer whale preying on young or injured walruses, humans are their most common predators. While the Eskimos, Indians, and Aleuts hunt these marine mammals, they are allowed to do so on a subsistence level, although the allowed catch varies internationally. Commercial hunting of walruses was outlawed by Canada in 1930. Later, as wild populations declined dramatically, the United States, Greenland, and Russia joined in. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) listed the Pacific walrus in its Appendix III in 1975. However, hunting is not the main threat to wild walrus populations: uncontrolled oil exploration in the Arctic region may have farther-reaching effects on their habitat.

The NATURE program TOOTHWALKERS: GIANTS OF THE ARCTIC ICE follows the trail of wildlife filmmaker Adam Ravetch on his quest for some of the first underwater walrus footage ever shot. But in what kind of environment do the Arctic’s creatures live?

A walrus mother and pup. The vast arctic region is perhaps the last place that would make most people feel “on top of the world,” yet that’s exactly where it is. Some 2.9 million square miles of polar desert, tundra, and ice surround the North Pole within what we call the Arctic Circle. Of course, that acreage changes with the seasons as ice floes melt in the warmer summer months, and then freeze again during the winter. Anyone who lives here must be prepared for extreme cold-weather conditions: temperatures plummet to -40 degrees Fahrenheit and winds rage at 25 miles per hour. To survive the polar winter, walruses have a three-inch blubber layer just beneath the skin. This fatty lining also acts as an energy bank for a lean feeding season.

While they look lethargic and clumsy on land, walruses are spry and fast in the water, averaging four to six miles per hour — much faster than humans can swim. Like sea lions, seals, and other pinnipeds (Latin for “fin-footed”), these “sea cows” have long, cone-shaped bodies streamlined for swimming. Their scientific family name, Odobenidae, is Latin for “those that walk with teeth,” and refers to the way these beasts use their tusks to haul out onto ice floes. Both males and females have these giant teeth, but only the males use them to fight for dominance within the herd. Walrus herds can number in the hundreds, and it is important for males to firmly establish their place in the pecking order by jousting, or lunging at each other with their tusks. Otherwise, the tusks serve as ice picks for movement and defense from marine predators.

A walrus mother and pup.

Although it was once thought that walruses used their tusks to dig for clams — their staple food — footage like Adam Ravetch’s shed light on a different foraging method. Scanning the ocean floor with their moustache pads of vibrissae, or whiskers, to locate clams and other mollusks, walruses blast jets of water from their mouths into the sand to uncover the clams, then suck the meat from the shells. An adult walrus can eat up to 6,000 clams a day, or four to six percent of its own body weight.

Walruses consume a high volume of food in preparation for their search for land when the ice starts to melt during the summer. For females, energy is especially important for calving.

An average pregnancy lasts 15 months, and walrus cows deliver one calf every two years or longer, just before the seasonal migration north to follow the receding ice. Youngsters will nurse for that two-year period. As you can see in TOOTHWALKERS walruses travel thousands of miles to their summer destinations, and calves must stay with their mothers. Occasionally, calves become orphaned at this time. Those that survive can live up to 30 years, reaching weights of up to 3,000 pounds for males and 2,000 pounds for females.

The walruses featured in TOOTHWALKERS live in Canada’s Foxe Basin, to the south of Baffin Island. Nearby, the remote Inuit hamlet of Igloolik, where Adam Ravetch established his research station, is steeped in tradition, with archeological sites that date back 4,000 years. Hunting walruses is a way of life for the people here, and various governments allow them to kill a limited number each year. Their methods are not that different from those recorded in the film NANOOK OF THE NORTH.

In 1922, explorer/filmmaker Robert Flaherty released NANOOK OF THE NORTH, which some cinematic historians consider a precursor to the modern documentary. This silent film stars an Inuit man named Alakarialak, who portrayed Nanook the Bear as he fought to survive the savage Arctic elements. With a recreated igloo and staged hunting scenes, the film provided audiences a first glimpse of one of the harshest environments inhabited by humans.

NATURE Online asked filmmaker Adam Ravetch, featured in TOOTHWALKERS to talk about the experience of filming walruses underwater:

Filming the Arctic walrus presented many challenges. I was searching for new subject matter, wildlife that little was known about, and I wanted to be challenged physically. I also wanted an adventure. So the Arctic was the perfect place. On my earlier trips to the north, I had been attracted to the narwhal (the unicorn whale, with a nine-foot “horn” that’s actually a tooth), but I soon began to hear more and more about the walrus. I decided to film walruses in their natural habitat, something no one had ever done. But even though I expected a challenge, I didn’t realize just how difficult a place to work the Arctic is. I quickly found out: surface conditions were well below zero, and water temperatures hovered at 29 degrees Fahrenheit. On top of that, the walruses I came to film spent most of their time underneath an eight-foot-thick canopy of ice! Because of the extreme cold, I could only stay underwater for about 40 minutes on each dive. I had to make that footage count.

Filming the Arctic walrus presented many challenges.

The windows of opportunity were few and far between. The hardest part was figuring out how to get close enough to take the walruses’ picture. It meant that I had to get to know the animal and the intricacies of its behavior. I began to investigate how I could film walruses in the water.

The Inuit immediately told me: “Don’t!” They warned that if a walrus were to come up to me while I was in the water, I must get out as quickly as possible. The Inuit spoke of the aggressive behavior walrus exhibit when hunted. The translation goes something like this: The angry walruses take to the water as a group and charge, penetrating the bottom of the wooden canoes with slashing tusks and leaving the Inuit to bail furiously. And although walruses mostly eat clams as their regular food source, scientists know that walruses will eat the occasional seal. This has been proven by eye-witness accounts and evidence of seals found in the stomach contents of walruses. The Inuit thought that, like a seal, a diver could also get grabbed — and maybe even eaten — by a hungry walrus.

It’s a funny thing. As an underwater cinematographer, when somebody warns you not to do something, it almost feeds your curiosity to figure out why not. Then you start figuring out how to do it.

But I was finally convinced of the danger when I spoke to the Arctic Bay’s then Renewable Resource Officer, Glen Williams, about swimming with walruses. He said, “Sure, you can go dive in the water with walruses, but first let me tie a rope around you. It’s a lot less paperwork for me if I can get your body back.”

I took heed of everyone’s advice and designed a cage, the same kind people use to film sharks underwater. Still, the first encounter I had was terrifying. The cage was manufactured with a camera port that also served as an escape route, large enough to swim out of if the situation got too dangerous. We dropped the cage, buoyed by four floats, into the water from our boat and anchored it up against a large piece of ice. I got into the cage and the boat pulled away.

Filming underwater was often a frightening experience. I waited for the walruses to emerge. I will never forget the sight of several walruses swimming right up to me out of the gloom for the first time. They were huge — as big as trucks. I felt totally alone and vulnerable. And that’s when I realized that my camera port was big enough for the walruses to get at me if they wanted to!

Before diving I had arranged an emergency signal with the surface crew. If something went wrong underwater, I was supposed to pull vigorously on one of the four floats, and the boat would come over and pick me up. After five minutes underwater, I was so intimidated by the enormous animals that, between camera takes, I kept tugging on the floats. It seemed like hours before the boat came over and fished me out. On board, I glanced at my wife, whose job was to shoot surface camera. She was dutifully set up to film my possible demise. A bit dismayed at my frantic yanking on the float, she asked, “What happened? Did they hit you?” I answered sheepishly, “No, they just looked at me.”

Filming underwater was often a frightening experience.

We repeated this process several times until I was satisfied with the footage. After I calmed down, I was amazed to see how much control the walruses had over themselves underwater. They could use their flippers to hover and turn on a dime. It was incredible to observe such a big animal in command of its environment — so different from their clumsiness on land.

After a number of encounters from the cage, the cage’s limitations became really obvious, because it would only give me limited access to the walrus. If I wanted to document the underwater wild societies of Eastern Atlantic Walrus properly, then I was going to have to get out of the cage and follow the walrus into its world. By diving without the safety of a cage between us, which you can see on TOOTHWALKERS, I was able to get closer to wild walrus than anyone has ever done before.

Adam Ravetch was born and educated in California. He has filmed the creatures of the world’s oceans for more than ninety shows, working for NHK Japan, CBS, NBC, The Cousteau Society, The Last Frontier series, and The Global Family series. TOOTHWALKERS contains the first underwater footage ever shot of wild walrus societies. Learn more about his work on his Web site.