A shot ripped through the air. Such is the nature of investigating the Atlantic walrus of the eastern Canadian Arctic, where decades of work by Stewart and his colleagues are only beginning to shed some light on the complex character of these enigmatic animals. Throughout history, few creatures have so staunchly wrenched themselves into popular imagination as has the walrus. For millennia, Inuit peoples regarded them as alternatively possessing supernatural and human attributes. Walruses are pinnipeds, a widely distributed group of marine mammals that also includes sea lions and seals.
Pacific walruses are more migratory and more numerous than their Atlantic counterparts.
They are most commonly found in the Bering and Chukchi seas of Alaska and Russia, and are thought to exceed 200,000 in number. Pacific walruses are also much better understood than the Atlantic variety, the result of much greater research funding by the American government. And from the behavioral perspective, virtually nothing had been done. So Rob has made major contributions to the field in that regard. No amount of research has helped the once-abundant Atlantic walrus to rebound from the human exploitation that ravaged its ranks over the past three to five centuries, however.