Why "Walrus"?

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes - and ships - and sealing-wax -
Of cabbages - and kings -
And why the sea is boiling hot -
And whether pigs have wings.”

--Lewis Carroll, “Through the Looking-glass”

First... a Short Video:

Tracking Pacific Walrus:
Expedition to the Shrinking Chukchi Sea Ice

• Video is 11:45 Minutes
• http://youtu.be/pF-aNYhCr8k or http://gallery.usgs.gov/videos/600

Summer ice retreat in the Chukchi Sea between Alaska and Russia is a significant climate change impact affecting Pacific Walruses, which are being considered for listing as a threatened species. This twelve minute video follows walruses in their summer sea ice habitat and shows how USGS biologists use satellite radio tags to track their movements and behavior. The information identifies areas of special importance to walruses during sparse summer sea ice and as human presence increases in the region from oil drilling and activities such as shipping and tourism now possible with less ice.

So, why is this web site named “walrus.wr.usgs.gov”?

Why can't I find any information on Walrus (the sea mammal) here?

A little history:

In the early 1990's, Pacific Marine Geology (an old name for the current Western Coastal and Marine Geology team), experimented with several new Internet services, including FTP, Gopher, Z39.50, and the Web.

The US Geological Survey at that time had almost no responsibility for biological research. Pacific Marine Geology worked on ocean-related earth science issues only.

We started naming our servers after sea creatures, like dolphin, octopus, squid, ... and walrus.

Walrus.wr.usgs.gov became our Web server. We didn't know then how important Web server names might become.

The Web became more important, many other sites linked to information on walrus.wr.usgs.gov, and we chose to keep this unusual name instead of breaking lots of links.

In the mid 1990's, to confuse matters even more, the National Biological Survey became the Biology Division of the USGS. Some of those biologists do research on Walrus (the sea mammal).

So now we have a bunch of mostly geology information on a web site named after a sea mammal, in an organization that does research on sea mammals elsewhere.

• For more information on USGS Walrus (sea mammal) research:
  http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/walrus/index.html
• Fact sheet on Walrus (the sea mammal) from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service - Alaska:
  http://alaska.fws.gov/fisheries/mmm/walrus/nhistory.htm
• Fact sheet "Whales and Walrus: Tillers of the Seafloor":
  http://marine.usgs.gov/fact-sheets/whales/
• USGS report for the Minerals Management Service: "Gray Whale and Pacific Walrus Benthic Feeding Grounds and Sea Floor Interaction in the Chuckchi Sea"
  http://www.mms.gov/alaska/reports/1990rpts/93_0042.pdf [Download PDF (8272 K)]
• Who Is the Walrus?
  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/science/20walrus.html