The missing heads and tusks don’t necessarily indicate illegal activity, Medeiros noted.

The reason of the death of the walruses at Point Lay hasn’t been reckoned yet. Interestingly, the heads and tusks of some of the carcasses were taken off. Federal prosecutors stated this week that they can not remark on the case.

About three dozen young walruses were found dead last week on the beach near Point Lay, but they do not appear to have died as a result of foul play, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday.

Loeffler and Noel said that to protect the integrity of the investigation they would no longer comment on the incident.

Why? That’s what federal authorities – including the local US attorney and special agent in charge of Alaska’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office – want to know.

If the walruses were indeed found dead, it is not illegal for non-natives to harvest the ivory off the corpses.

“If we have one area where 35,000 of these animals are huddled together, it is not really far fetched to think that you may have a smaller aggregation of the animals in close vicinity”, said Horstmann-Dehn, who studies how walruses react and adapt to a changing climate. A person connected to the station reported the dead walruses and sent a photo of the animals to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Thus, it is possible that the tusks of the Cape Lisburne walruses were collected after they died.

Like elephant tusks, the ivory found in walrus tusks is considered of high value in underground circles.

The massive walrus haul outs, once rare, have become increasingly regular in recent years due to the extreme retreat of the summer ice cover in Alaska. An estimated 35,000 Pacific walrus were photographed September 2 near Point Lay about 100 miles northeast of Cape Lisburne. When sea ice forms again in September, walrus can leave their shoreline hangouts.

When floating ice is present, they use it for resting and nursing in between dives to the seafloor to forage for clams, worms and other food.

Walruses in large numbers on shore were first spotted on the US side of the Chukchi Sea in 2007. Since 2007, diminishing sea ice in summer and fall has forced more and more female walruses and their pups ashore. Sea ice and glaciers in the Arctic are receding, the permafrost is melting, and sea levels are rising.

Walruses gathered in huge herds can stampede if approached by a polar bear, hunter or airplane.