UPDATED: 12:32 p.m. ET on August 28 to reflect information from an interagency press conference.

With the sea ice they depend on for hunting and habitat disappearing at the end of the Arctic melt season, thousands of walruses have once again hauled out onto the northwestern Alaskan shoreline near Point Lay, Alaska. The haul out was revealed by photographer Gary Braasch in photographs dated Aug. 23 and confirmed to Mashable by the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies.

Such haul out events, which can be dangerous for walruses since they can be trampled to death when gathered so tightly together and scarce amounts of food on land, have become another symbol of global warming's growing footprint in the Arctic.

President Obama is scheduled to travel to Alaska to shine a spotlight on global warming from Aug. 31 to Sept. 2, which would be the longest-ever visit by a sitting president to the Frontier State. He will travel to Kotzebue, which is a remote village located above the Arctic Circle, only about 200 miles south of the haul out location, according to climate change photographer Gary Braasch.

The walrus haul out may serve as yet another sign of change for the president to point to as part of a campaign to promote his climate policies and push for a new global climate agreement during a crucial climate summit in Paris in less than three months from now.

Braasch's aerial photos of the walruses are posted on his website. However, Braasch is under investigation by the Fish and Wildlife Service for potentially violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act by taking the photos from a small aircraft, if he strayed too close to the group of walruses.

In a press call with reporters on Friday, Mac Whistler, resident agent in charge with FWS law enforcement in Fairbanks, said that while there are no formal FAA flight restrictions currently in place, guidelines call for aircraft to keep a safe distance from the easily spooked, large mammals.

“We are currently looking into the situation with the photographer but because that is ongoing we can’t make any more comments about that,” he said.

Braasch is a career nature photographer who travels around the world documenting the effects of climate change, and the photos appear to be shot from a significant distance away from the walruses.

Aerial photograph of thousands of Pacific walrus coming ashore near Point Lay, Alaska on August 23, 2015. Image: Gary Braasch

Paul Laustsen, a spokesman for the USGS, confirmed to Mashable in an email that walruses are hauling out in Alaska, though the agency does not yet know how many animals are involved. In the past, up to 40,000 female and young walruses have hauled out in the area.

Inclement weather in the area has prevented wildlife officials and local residents of Point Lay, a small community of 264 people, from observing the haul out area.

The agency cautioned via Twitter and a fact sheet that it has only been monitoring walrus haul outs since 2007, which was a record-low sea ice year. This is the seventh time in nine years that walruses have been expelled from the Chukchi Sea by dwindling sea ice.

“This is a new phenomenon,” said Anthony Fischbach, a wildlife biologist at the USGS in Alaska, during the press conference on Friday. Such haul outs, he said, "[have] only been seen during years of complete sea ice melt in the Chukchi Sea.”

An estimated 5,000 walruses hauled out near Ryrkaypiy in Chukotka, Russia, earlier this month. Image: WWF/Maksim Deminov

Presumably, such events could have been occurring prior to 2007, but it's clear to scientists that these events are tied to sea ice trends. Arctic sea ice has plunged in recent years. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a new record low was set four times during the last 12 years (2002, 2005, 2007, and 2012), while several other years saw near-record lows.

Government radio tracking by the U.S. Geological Survey shows a number of tagged walruses moving closer to shore as sea ice dwindled, starting in early-to-mid August. The walruses (yellow dots) can be seen moving south as the sea ice (white) melts, in the animation below.

This is the earliest haul-out on record, since most of the previous ones have not occurred until September, the USGS said. The annual sea ice minimum in the nearby Chukchi Sea and throughout the Arctic typically does not occur until mid-September.

Because of the timing, officials expect the number of walruses on the beach in Point Lay to grow as the sea ice minimum approaches.

This year, Arctic-wide sea ice is expected to rank somewhere in the five worst Arctic sea ice extents on record, with slightly more ice than the record lows set in 2012 and 2007.

"With this year’s low summer sea ice extent, it’s not surprising to see walrus beginning to haul out on shore looking for a place to rest," said Margaret Williams, the World Wildlife Fund's director of Arctic programs, in a statement.

According to the USGS, sea ice in the northern Chukchi Sea melted entirely again this year, as it has "nearly every summer" since 2007, with the exceptions of 2008 and 2012, when remnant sea ice persisted over the waters of the continental shelf.

The USGS says that female walruses and their young forage over the shallow continental shelf of the Chukchi Sea in U.S. and Russian waters during the summer, relying on the sea ice as resting platforms between foraging trips. They haul out in Alaska and Russia when sea ice recedes past the shallower continental shelf waters and into the deeper Arctic Basin, where feeding is more difficult.

Last year, a record 35,000 Pacific walruses hauled out of the Chukchi Sea onto a beach near Point Lay, Alaska. Walruses are an ice-dependent species, and with sea ice having retreated far offshore, walruses have been forced to swim to land to be able to forage and rest, officials said.

Aerial photograph of thousands of Pacific walrus coming ashore near Point Lay, NW Arctic coast of Alaska on August 23, 2015. This is one of the earliest known haul outs, which have occurred increasingly as Arctic sea ice melts faster and covers less of the sea. Image: Gary Braasch

Haul out events also occur in the Russian Arctic, including near Ryrkarpiy, Vankarem, and Cape Serdtse-Kamen on the Chukotka Peninsula and on the western shores of Wrangle Island. Scientists from both countries have been monitoring the animals to see how they are responding to the rapidly changing climate, and will adapt wildlife management programs to better protect them.

For example, during large haul out events, airspace restrictions can be put into place to avoid spooking walruses by flying too low over their haul out locations, which can cause deadly stampedes back into the water. In 2014, about 60 walruses died because of the population density involved, the USGS stated.

Fischbach said even larger numbers of carcassas were found in 2011, when at least 130 walruses were killed.

Leo Ferreira III, Point Lay Tribal Council President, told reporters that local residents, who rely on walrus meat as a major source of food in early spring — not during the haul outs — told reporters that they don't want journalists or tourists coming to town to see the hauled out mammals because this poses a risk to the walruses and disturbs the community as well.

“Please respect our wishes," he said. "This is a tribal government and this is very disturbing when you guys disrespect our way of living, disrespect our community.”