Whaling crews get 3 bowheads for Point Hope BUTCHERING: Fine spring weather helps hunters in small boats.

Whaling crews from the North Slope village of Point Hope have landed three bowheads within a week, residents say, marking three of the first successful hunts of the spring season.
"Everybody's still kind of tired and busy," said captain Herbert Kinneeveauk, whose crew landed a 28-foot whale on April 22. Crews harvested two more small whales on Thursday and Friday, he said.
Whalers continued to paddle traditional sealskin boats Sunday in the frigid water between slabs of ice off Alaska's northwest coast in hopes of adding to the bounty.
"It was a happy time for Point Hope, and it's still a happy time. They got two more this past week," Kinneeveauk said.
Butchering the whales is keeping the village busy.
"Every whale is different. Some might take four hours, some might take two days, three days, four days," Kinneeveauk said.
The meat is divided among residents, and because Kinneeveauk's crew brought in the first bowhead, he gets to decide when the annual whale feast will be.
Another captain, Ramona Rock, said the celebration will be sometime after crews have finished whaling for the season.
Her husband is a whaling captain too, Rock said in a phone interview as she and her children cleaned house. Rock hopes the weather cooperates for crews hunting in the small boats. Temperatures rose above 30 degrees during the past week, she said.
"It was like springtime weather but now it's like snowing and raining again," Rock said.
"There have been a lot of whales going by this year," she said. "One of the guys just said they saw a polar bear swimming right by them."

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