On the 8th July, the first of almost two dozen tagged or collared polar bears came ashore in Western Hudson Bay (WH) under unusual sea ice conditions. How does this compare to previous years?
Image above is from last year (6 July 2021): we haven’t yet had a sighting from the live cams on the shore of Wapusk National Park near Churchill reported at Explore.org.
From my own archive of maps posted on twitter by Andrew Derocher (University of Alberta).
2022 (8 July)
This year’s map shows one bear ashore and moved well inland (likely a pregnant female looking for a good den location). Notice how close to the shore at Churchill the ice is this year (and note that only ice of >50% concentration is shown in these charts). The last time there were this many tagged bears to watch was 2019 (before Covid-19 restrictions halted field work):
2021 (5 July)
[only a few tagged bears were still transmitting at this point, no new tags installed since spring 2019 due to Covid-19 restrictions]
2020 (17 July)
2019 (6 July)
2017 (17 July)
2015 (22 June)
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