Less than a month after a fatal polar bear attack near Arviat, Western Hudson Bay, European media reported this morning that one of two German polar bear guards escorting a group of tourists on a shore visit in northern Svalbard was mauled on 28 July by a polar bear before the second guard could kill it.
The man was air-lifted to hospital in Longyearbyen with non-life-threatening head injuries. Whether the bear was fat or thin was not mentioned but a necropsy will be performed.
More details are likely to be available within the next few days. The guards and tourists were from the German cruise ship MS Bremen, which apparently is operating a live web cam. The group landed on the Sjuøyane Islands, the northernmost group of islands in the Svalbard archipelago (see the top of the black box on the map below).
UPDATE 28 July 2018 11:00 pm PT: The photo of the dead bear (above, provided by the Governor of Svalbard), shows the animal was in poor condition. See my comments below regarding sea ice coverage for the area: the bear had likely been on the islands since early May and if he was not in good condition when he left the ice, he would have been desperate by now. However, we still do not know if he was sick or injured, young or old. That information will come with time.
UPDATE 29 July 2018: The cruise ship line has released a statement on Facebook that includes further details about the attack, see below.
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