Category Archives: Sea ice habitat

It’s the middle of July – do researchers know where their Hudson Bay polar bears are?

Posted on July 14, 2015 | Comments Off on It’s the middle of July – do researchers know where their Hudson Bay polar bears are?

If so, they’re not saying. This year, with higher-than-average sea ice, we’ve heard much less than usual about the location of tagged Hudson Bay polar bears. Odd, isn’t it?

Hudson Bay breakup 2015_2014_14 July

By this time last year, Polar Bears International rep Alysa McCall had published two reports on the location WHB polar bears tagged by the University of Alberta research team led by Andrew Derocher (Fig. 1 below).

Figure 1. Sea ice coverage and locations of female polar bears with tracking collars for 30 June 2014 and 8 July 2014 (black, Western Hudson Bay bears; blue, Southern Hudson Bay bears), courtesy Alysa McCall, Polar Bears International. Click to enlarge.

Figure 1. Sea ice coverage and locations of female polar bears with tracking collars for 30 June 2014 and 8 July 2014 (black, Western Hudson Bay bears; blue, Southern Hudson Bay bears), courtesy Alysa McCall, Polar Bears International. Click to enlarge.

This year, there’s been nothing: not a single PBI mention of WHB breakup. Derocher tweeted a track map on 6 July (2/9 bears ashore), with no updates since, but PBI’s “Bear Tracker” has not been updated since 2 July. Compare this year’s ice cover on Hudson Bay (and elsewhere in Canada) to last year on this date (14 July): quite a difference.
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Sea ice breakup update: high ice coverage just about everywhere, even Hudson Bay

Posted on July 8, 2015 | Comments Off on Sea ice breakup update: high ice coverage just about everywhere, even Hudson Bay

There is still a lot of sea ice in Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin, Davis Strait and Baffin Bay this week – more than average for this date – with slightly less than average in the Beaufort Sea. Past behaviour of Western and Southern Hudson Bay polar bears suggests the mean date that bears come ashore for the summer this year will be later than average due to the plentiful ice available, regardless of when polar bear biologists decide that “breakup” has occurred.

Hudson Bay breakup July 8 2015_CIS

Hudson Bay, with almost 50% of the bay still covered in ice, has the third highest coverage this week since 1992 (after 2009 and 2004); Davis Strait has the highest coverage since 1992; and Foxe Basin and Baffin Bay have the highest coverage since 1998. For this week, the Beaufort Sea has the second highest coverage since 2006 (after 2013), and more ice than was present in 1971, 1982, 1987, 1988 and 1998 – among others.

Published data shows that most polar bears of Western Hudson Bay traditionally come ashore in July, but this year it might be late July or even August. Have a look at the charts below.
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Polar bears fine now but give us more money: US Fish & Wildlife Management Plan subtext

Posted on July 7, 2015 | Comments Off on Polar bears fine now but give us more money: US Fish & Wildlife Management Plan subtext

Between-the-lines message of the recently released (and hyped to death) Conservation Management Plan for polar bears by the US Fish & Wildlife Service is that the bears really have nothing to worry about except human-caused global warming but it will cost tens of millions of dollars over the next five years to study and manage them.

polar_bear_usfws_no date_sm

So filled with double-speak, misinformation, and obfuscation [including the newly-invented term, “quasi-extinction floor”] that it’s no wonder some news outlets got it wrong (nowhere in this document does it say that “polar bears might go extinct within ten years“). The document does, however, lay out the FWS budget for polar bears over the next five years – and it’s a real eye-opener.

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Tracking polar bears in the Southern Beaufort June 2015 – all 17 bears out on the sea ice

Posted on July 5, 2015 | Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Southern Beaufort June 2015 – all 17 bears out on the sea ice

Sixteen females with satellite collars plus one with a glue-on transmitter – down from 17 with collars and 6 with tags last month – all out on the ice during the month of June 2015.

Tranquilized_pb570_S Beaufort March 2014_USGS

Polar bears were captured by USGS biologists in 2014 and 2015 on the spring-time sea ice of the southern Beaufort Sea. The glue-on tags don’t seem to be holding up very well, with only one remaining out of the original eight deployed this spring.
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USGS promotes another flawed polar bear model: GHG emissions still “primary threat”

Posted on June 30, 2015 | Comments Off on USGS promotes another flawed polar bear model: GHG emissions still “primary threat”

It’s still based on the same flawed ecological premise as all previous models – it assumes that sea ice was a naturally stable habitat until human-caused global warming came along. It also uses slight-of-hand maneuvers to correlate declining summer sea ice and declining polar bear population numbers.

PolarBearCV1_USGS_2009

Just because they keep repeating the same hype doesn’t make it true.
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Polar bear habitat update: many bears on the ice in Hudson Bay, lots of sea ice globally

Posted on June 25, 2015 | Comments Off on Polar bear habitat update: many bears on the ice in Hudson Bay, lots of sea ice globally

Polar bear habitat over Hudson Bay was average this week (at 60% coverage), despite the odd pattern of breakup – but the end of spring in the Arctic is only 5 days away and there is still plenty of polar bear habitat in all regions.

Hudson Bay breakup 2015 June 22 and 24_sm

According to the Canadian Ice Service (CIS), there is still more ice in the eastern portion of the bay than usual and much less in the northwest (Fig. 1 below). There is far more ice than average ice in Hudson Strait, the approach to southern Davis Strait.

Figure 1. Hudson Bay sea ice, difference from average at 22 June 2015. Blue is less than average, red is more than average. CIS.

Figure 1. Hudson Bay sea ice, difference from average at 22 June 2015. Blue is less than average, red is more than average. CIS. Click to enlarge.

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Many polar bears cubs seen in Svalbard this year, says Norwegian biologist

Posted on June 24, 2015 | Comments Off on Many polar bears cubs seen in Svalbard this year, says Norwegian biologist

Good news from Norway: polar bears around Svalbard are in excellent condition this spring and many females with new cubs have been spotted. This is a marked turn around from conditions just last year.

Roy Mangersnes / Wildphoto


Roy Mangersnes / Wildphoto

According to a Norwegian news outlet yesterday, Jon Aars (Fig. 1, below), from the Norwegian Polar Institute, confirms that this has been an excellent year for polar bear cubs around Svalbard because there has been abundant sea ice near denning areas on the east coast.

Figure 1. Biologist Jon Aars with a Svalbard cub.

Figure 1. Biologist Jon Aars with a Svalbard cub.

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When was the earliest ice breakup year for Western Hudson Bay polar bears?

Posted on June 17, 2015 | Comments Off on When was the earliest ice breakup year for Western Hudson Bay polar bears?

Was 1990 really the earliest ice breakup year for Western Hudson Bay polar bears – and why aren’t breakup dates derived from the same data identical? Two serious questions that need answering.

Sea ice extent Canada 2015 June 17 CIS

The suggestion a few weeks ago by Andrew Derocher that the unusual breakup pattern of sea ice breakup in Hudson Bay this year might set a new record reminded me how often I’ve questioned the claim that 1990 had the earliest breakup for WHB since 1971.

I call this date into question for two reasons: 1) sea ice maps and charts like those shown below suggest an early breakup in 1990 was not possible, by any definition of the term; 2) none of the research reports on WHB bears, for periods that included 1990, mention that breakup in 1990 was especially early, even though many commented (often at length) about the especially late breakup in 1992.

How much does this very early breakup in 1990 contribute to the apparent declining trend in breakup dates since 1979?1  Is the early breakup date in 1990 real, perhaps a bizarre consequence of analyzing the data square-by-square over a grid? Or, were there errors in 1990 sea ice data that eventually got corrected by sea ice folks but not by polar bear biologists?

UPDATE 17 June 2015 – PDF HERE of this post, with higher resolution images, for those who want to explore the questions I’ve posed or share them.
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Same amount of sea ice for Hudson Bay polar bears as 2013, bears still on the ice

Posted on June 16, 2015 | Comments Off on Same amount of sea ice for Hudson Bay polar bears as 2013, bears still on the ice

Sea ice coverage for Hudson Bay on 14 June converged on levels recorded in 2013, when breakup was slightly later than the average of the last two decades.

r10_Hudson_Bay_ts

There is also more ice over Hudson Bay than there was in 2011, which was an early breakup year (charts for other Arctic regions here, originals here).

Andrew Derocher notes (via twitter) that rather than heading to shore, most of the Hudson Bay bears with satellite tracking collars (7/10) are out on the ice (Fig. 1 below). They appear to be hunting along the ice edge, where they are most likely to find seals.

Update 17 June 2015: Sea ice images for the week 18 June 2015 compared to other years added below, for Hudson Bay and the Beaufort Sea.

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Polar bear behaviour gets the animal tragedy porn treatment – two new papers

Posted on June 12, 2015 | Comments Off on Polar bear behaviour gets the animal tragedy porn treatment – two new papers

Recently, several polar bear biologists have teamed up with photographers to get pictures of starving bears into the scientific literature – and picked up by the media, with mixed results.

doi:10.3402/polar.v34.26612
For the second time in five years, polar bear biologist Ian Stirling has teamed up with a photographer to give unwarranted scientific credence to an anecdotal account of polar bear behaviour. It included a picture of a pitifully thin animal  (classic animal tragedy porn) and was framed to increase alarm over predicted effects of global warming. It got little media attention.

His Norwegian colleagues Jon Aars and Magnus Andersen have just done the same with a bear caught eating a white-beaked dolphin (photo above) – but this time the media took the bait.

Update 13 June 2015 – Information added on white-beaked dolphin distribution, sea ice conditions in 2014 and a correction. See below.
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