Point Barrow in northern Alaska is a desolate place. In the driving sleet of an August afternoon it is hard to imagine that this remote Inuit settlement has been occupied for thousands of years. It seems amazing that the community has been able to survive here for so long. The reason is, however, simple. Every year bowhead whales migrate past the point and the Inuit have been able to catch sufficient for their needs and store the flesh and blubber in the permafrost to provide food throughout the year. The reliability of this migratory pattern is the key to continued occupation of the site. The bowhead whale returned to the Arctic Ocean after the end of the last ice age, when the land bridge of Beringia was flooded by rising sea levels around 10 kya. Thereafter, they commonly ranged from the Beaufort Sea to Baffin Bay. Bowheads feed year-round in the Beaufort, Chukchi and Bering seas. They use a variety of strategies, including feeding under ice and swimming in groups in V-shaped formation, to increase feeding efficiency. Their movement into the Beaufort Sea following the receding ice may have been one of the reasons why the Inuit moved into the North American Arctic in the early Holocene.