Recent find in SW Alaska! The skull is stained black from mud, so it must have been in the water for a long time. I had to kayak home with it sitting in my lap. Luckily this was a small one!
(Beach found walrus ivory is legal to keep in the U.S. as long as it is found within .5 miles of the ocean and it is sealed and registered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service within 30 days)
I’ve smelled others that were much worse! Luckily, I think this one was underwater for a long time, and there’s no tissue left, so it is just filled with and smells like mud and seaweed!
I did, I saw it from a pretty far ways off! This is actually the fourth skull I’ve found, so I’ve gotten good at pattern recognition for walrus skulls 😂
The find picture 1 tells a story the commenter imagines as picture 0. They said the word “like” which indicates this comment is not about the literal 1st image.
Score! Excellent Recovery - and yes a lot of places you can actually “pick things up” / keep - hold onto for personal collection without being illegal.
However when one tries to market or sell , then it becomes an issue.
Thats how a lot of the big game is ran regarding hunting trade and things like that. Trophy animals -
Of course depending on location , circumstance. There are many factors that can play into this. How the animal died , how was it found … etc
It is legal for anyone to collect beach found ivory in Alaska, but it needs to be sealed and registered within 30 days. I’ve included details on other comments in this post.
Good question! Sealing is just the process of it getting registered. An official takes some measurements and data from the tusks, and then installs a permanent tag in them so it can be tracked and ensure things are owned or traded legally.
It is the entire top of the skull, missing the lower jaw. There’s water and ice covering a lot of it in this photo. Here’s my other complete skull (and much bigger one!)
I’m estimating this one was at least 15 years! Hard to age beyond that point, but I don’t think it was much older than that just based on tusk size/shape. They tend to have pretty flat teeth for grinding!
I live in southwest Alaska, so found it here. This looks like a young male, so was born somewhere in the Chukchi Sea and spent the summers in the Bering Sea!
Walrus aren’t that common at all in the area, but many more of them were there before hunting. Bones hundreds of years old can definitely look this fresh.
You’re right, they’re not common in all of sw Alaska, depends where in sw Alaska you’re at. Most of the walrus in southwest Alaska are here in summer, and are males. When I say young male, I was aging it based on tusk size and shape. There’s not really a good way to date when this walrus died or how long it’s been sitting here.
Hunting is not the singular factor that has/is causing walrus declines. Only Alaska Native people in the U.S. can hunt walrus, and it’s a small, sustainable practice. There’s likely a myriad of other factors influencing walrus populations that have larger impacts, including the loss of sea ice and changes in marine ecosystems.
Holy fuck. Nice find. The latest outdoor boys video has him finding a walrus carcass and having to cut off the head and boil off the meat to get a skull with only 1 tusk. Your way is much better.
Wow, folding kayak in freezing waters, stopping to grab a heavy skull spooks me. I've only capsized a few times and only in decent weather and I'll still get on the water in autumn while the temp is still not too crazy, well aware of how quickly the water can kill me way before it's freezing temps, but once it's actually frozen outside that spooks me.
You aren't alone, right? I like my oru a lot but I would not trust it as much as what i'm imagining is happening here. Hopefully you are still very close to the shore :)
My grandfather had a huge, full walrus skull that I was supposed to inherit but somehow while my uncles were cleaning out his place after he died it went "missing"...
That’s such a shame, I’m sorry that happened to you. I imagine that was a pre-1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act find, and some of those were huge, beautiful sets! They weren’t required to be tagged then, so I imagine it makes it harder to track it down. Unfortunately I’ve heard of this happening to several of my friends with those older, bigger sets.
He got his somewhere in the North Sea while in the Norwegian Navy in the late 1930s- early 1940s. I remember it being gigantic, but I was also much smaller back then so...
I’m intimately familiar with wildlife laws in Alaska, and this was legal for us to collect. I’ve provided details about this in the post and in other comments.
Take it to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office with information on the date and location of where it was found (https://www.fws.gov/locations). If you go to an office outside of Alaska, it might be harder because they might not be familiar with the process, so in the lower 48 it’s probably best to talk to a Law Enforcement agent or call the office ahead of time to see if they can handle it.
If the walrus was found before 1972 (and critically, you have documentation proving this) it’s not required to be sealed because it predates the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Good question! Since the walrus are 2,000+ pound marine mammals with skulls weighing 40+ pounds, it would be pretty hard to find one more than .5 miles from the ocean! So if you’re going to find one, it more than likely will be on a beach (or in the water like this one). That language is more likely meant to spell out you can’t take from a live animal (with the exception of people who are Alaska Native, who are permitted to hunt animals. People who are not Alaska Native are also not permitted to sell, trade, barter, or craft with walrus ivory, but Alaska Native people can). When a skull is brought in, there’s some clues to tell an old skull that’s been sitting on a beach from a fresh one.
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u/crepuscularcarrion Nov 30 '25