ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Anna Oxereok grew up eating walrus in the western Alaska village of Wales. Today it's such a rare treat she can't bring herself to part with the plastic gallon bag of meat in her freezer.

"I have to save it for something special," she says.

Her brother caught two animals this spring and shared the meat and fat, but it didn't go very far in the village of 150. She's thankful for what she got, though. It's become increasingly difficult to land a walrus.

Other remote communities at the edge of the Bering Sea also are seeing a steep decline in walrus harvested the past several years. Walrus, described by some as having a taste between veal and beef, is highly prized by Alaska Natives as a subsistence food to store for winter, with the adult male animals averaging 2,700 pounds. The sale of carved ivory from the tusks, legal only for Alaska Natives, also brings in supplemental income to communities with high unemployment rates.

Hunters and scientists say walrus migration patterns are veering from historical hunting grounds as temperatures warm and the ocean ice used by the animals to dive and rest recedes farther north. Village elders also tell biologists the wind is blowing in new directions. In 2013, a late-season icepack clustered around St. Lawrence Island, blocking hunters from the sea.

"I think one of the biggest issues is that things have gotten so variable. It's hard to really predict what's going to happen," said Jim MacCracken, Alaska walrus program supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Iver Campbell and other Yup'ik Eskimo hunters from two St. Lawrence Island communities harvested more than 1,100 walrus in 2003. But a decade later, hunters managed to take only 555 — a fraction of the ideal of one walrus per resident, per year. Things still aren't looking any better for the 1,430 residents of the villages of Gambell and Savoonga. The recent spring take was 233 walrus, according to preliminary Fish and Wildlife figures.

The shore ice once served to block the wind for hunters but that's no longer the case, said Campbell, who's lived all 64 years in Gambell, population 713.

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This April 17, 2004, photo provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows two walrus cows on i …

"The ice goes out real fast, melts real fast," he said. "We don't have anything to counter the wind and the rough water."

Science backs that observation. According to the Office of Naval Research, the past eight years have had the eight lowest amounts of summer sea ice on record.

Far from the state's limited road system, costly store-bought food is not an affordable solution. At village stores, pantry staples quickly add up — nearly $7 for a dozen eggs, $15 for a gallon of milk and $6.25 for a loaf of basic white bread. People rely on the region's resources for up to 80 percent of their diets.

Their hunting practices are closely monitored by federal authorities to ensure the animals that are killed are not going to waste. Generally, such hunts don't cause a public outcry in Alaska.

In these communities, a subsistence lifestyle is a necessity. In fact, the low harvest this year recently prompted a donation of 10,000 pounds of frozen halibut to four affected villages.

"A decline in the subsistence harvest really creates an economic disaster that threatens the health and welfare of the people in the communities," said Vera Metcalf, director of the Eskimo Walrus Commission. "So we are concerned about the impacts of climate change and the ability for our hunters to harvest marine mammals."

Some Native communities can search for other animals, like domestic reindeer or caribou. But opportunities aren't as bountiful for Diomede on the western coast of Little Diomede Island, only a few miles from Russia. The community of 120 harvested one walrus in 2014, prompting city and Native leaders to seek assistance from the state.

This year, 10 walrus were harvested, according to Diomede hunter Robert Soolook. There's no shortage of walrus, he said, but they're migrating sooner. No one has initiated any long-range planning to address the shift, but Soolook believes hunters eventually will need to change their practices, even going out earlier.

"Now that we've seen this, we have to start adapting," he said.

No federal assistance is available, and state aid is minimal, at best. State Sen. Sen. Donny Olson, D-Golovin, said he might introduce legislation to allow failed subsistence hunts to qualify for state disaster funds.

Moving from her ancestral lands is not an option, according to Oxereok, an Inupiat Eskimo. Relocating would mean displacing everything she knows.

"It's not that simple because your roots are here," she said.

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Los Angeles (AFP) - The US Coast Guard said it has seized $181 million worth of cocaine from a submarine-like vessel in the eastern Pacific Ocean, but even more drugs sank during the bust.

The Coast Guard seized 12,000 pounds (5,400 kilograms) of cocaine from four smugglers on a semi-submersible ship, the agency said Wednesday.

The vessel, which was first spotted about 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of Mexico, was carrying a total of 16,000 pounds of narcotics, but as the ship was being towed, it took on water and sank. Some 4,000 pounds of narcotics were lost in the process.

The seizure, which took place on July 18, was the "largest recorded semi-submersible interdiction in Coast Guard history," according to the agency.

The 40-foot (12-meter) vessel was deemed "unrecoverable" after it sank.

The Coast Guard said there have been 25 known interdictions of semi-submersible vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean since November 2006.

"Every interception of these semi-submersibles disrupts transnational organized crime networks and helps increase security and stability in the Western Hemisphere," Vice Admiral Charles W. Ray, commander of the Pacific area, said in a statement.

Semi-submersible ships are designed for drug trafficking, and because they are mostly submerged -- often with only a cockpit and exhaust pipe visible above water -- they are particularly difficult to detect and interdict, the Coast Guard said.

Afghan immigrants arrive on a dinghy on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece, August 6, 2015. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency called on Greece on Friday to take control of the "total chaos" on Mediterranean islands where thousands of migrants have landed.

European Union member states must also do more to share the burden of Greece, where 50,000 people arrived in July alone, said Vincent Cochetel, UNHCR director for Europe, after visiting the Greek islands of Lesbos, Kos and Chios.

"In terms of water, in terms of sanitation, in terms of food assistance, it's totally inadequate. On most of the islands, there is no reception capacity, people are not sleeping under any form of roof," he told a news briefing.

"So it's total chaos on the islands. After a couple of days they are transferred to Athens, there is nothing waiting for them in Athens."

Greek authorities must "lead and coordinate the response", said Cochetel, a 30-year veteran of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees who said he had "never seen a situation like that".

"We are concerned with the situation where no one is really assuming leadership in the response, which makes it very difficult for humanitarian operators to participate in the efforts," he said.

Cochetel voiced concern that the situation not degenerate in Greece or be "exploited" for political ends.

"The top priority is not to let other Calais develop in other places of Europe," he added. Many migrants head for the French port, and at least 10 have died trying to enter Britain through the Channel Tunnel.

(Editing by Andrew Roche)

ROME (AP) — Survivors of a migrant boat that capsized off Libya as rescuers approached told investigators their smugglers used violence to keep people in the vessel's hold, increasing fears that more than 200 died trapped inside, police in Sicily said Friday.

The five suspected smugglers — Libyan and Algerian men — were detained a day earlier in Palermo as they disembarked, along with 362 survivors, from an Irish naval vessel that helped in Wednesday's rescue, police said. Six other migrants who survived were helicoptered from sea to the hospital. Twenty-six bodies have been recovered.

The suspects were arrested for investigation of multiple counts of manslaughter and aiding illegal immigration, and are accused of belonging to a criminal organization based in Libya, from where the overcrowded, unseaworthy vessels set sail.

"According to some of the witness accounts, these criminals allegedly each had a precise role," the police statement said. "One of these, along with two others, commanded the boat; the others were tasked with controlling the migrants, impeding them from moving, even by using violence."

The five "allegedly caused the ascertained deaths of 26 people and the presumed deaths of about 200, who, according to what witnesses say, were closed inside the boat which overturned," the police added, estimating a total of 650 migrants had been aboard the 20-meter-long fishing boat.

Some migrants who fell into the water had life vests; others, struggling to swim, were tossed life vests by rescuers. Italian military helicopters lowered inflatable rafts.

Migrants paid $1,200 to $1,800 each to cross the Mediterranean as they fled war, persecution and poverty. Safer places on board cost more; life vests were sold separately as extras, police said.

Beirut (AFP) - The Islamic State jihadist group abducted 230 civilians, including at least 60 Christians, in a central Syrian town known as a symbol of religious coexistence, a monitoring group said Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the civilians were taken on Thursday in the town of Al-Qaryatain, which IS jihadists seized the previous day.

"Daesh kidnapped at least 230 people, including at least 60 Christians, during a sweep through Al-Qaryatain," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said, using another name for IS.

Amnesty International condemned the abductions as highlighting the suffering of civilians in the more than four-year-old Syrian conflict that has cost over 240,000 lives.

"The abhorrent abduction in Syria of more than 200 people by Islamic State highlights the dreadful plight of civilians caught up in the conflict in the country," said Neil Sammonds, Amnesty’s Syria researcher.

"The group must respect the rules of war and immediately release these civilians unharmed."

Bishop Matta al-Khoury, secretary at the Syriac Orthodox patriarchate in Damascus, told AFP he could not confirm what had happened in the town "because it's very hard to reach residents now".

"But we know that when IS entered the town, it forced some people into house arrest... to use them as human shields" against regime air strikes, Khoury said, urging IS to let the families leave the city.

The Assyrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were some 100 Syriac Christian families being detained in their homes by IS.

Al-Qaryatain lies at the crossroads between IS territory in the eastern countryside of Homs and areas further west in the Qalamun area.

It had a pre-war population of 18,000, including Sunni Muslims and around 2,000 Syriac Catholics and Orthodox Christians.

A Syrian Christian who lives in Damascus but is originally from Al-Qaryatain told AFP the town's Christian population had dropped to only 300.

And he stressed that Christians and Muslims coexisted peacefully in the town.

According to Al-Khoury, only 180 Christians were left in Al-Qaryatain by Thursday night.

Abdel Rahman told AFP that those abducted were wanted by IS for "collaborating with the regime," and their names were on a list used by the jihadists as they swept through the town.

They included Christians who had fled Aleppo province to the north in search of safety in Al-Qaryatain.

Families who tried to flee or hide were tracked down and taken by the jihadists, he said.

As IS continued its advance on the nearby villages of Sadad, Wahmin, and Houranin, hundreds of Christians began fleeing towards the provincial capital of Homs province, Abdel Rahman added.

In May, masked men abducted Syrian priest Jacques Mourad from the Syriac Catholic Mar Elian monastery in Al-Qaryatain, near the IS-held ancient city of Palmyra.

Mourad, who was known to help both Christians and Muslims, was preparing aid for an influx of refugees from Palmyra.

In late February, IS jihadists abducted 220 Assyrian Christians from villages in Syria's northeastern province of Hasakeh. At least 19 were released when ransoms were paid.