The Polar Wildlife Report is a peer reviewed summary of the most recent information on polar animals, relative to historical records, based on a review of 2022 scientific literature and media reports. It is intended for a wide audience, including scientists, teachers, students, decision-makers and the general public interested in animals that live in Arctic and Antarctic habitats, including polar bears, killer whales, krill, and penguins.
Comments Off on Polar Wildlife Report reveals Arctic and Antarctic animals were thriving in 2022
Posted in Conservation Status, emperor penguin, Population, Sea ice habitat, Summary, walrus
Tagged Antarctic, Arctic, beluga, bowhead, killer whale, penguin, polar bear, sea ice, Southern Ocean, walrus, Weddell seal
From the live cams installed on beluga tour boats running near the Churchill River, we have some good photos of a few fat polar bears onshore in Western Hudson Bay.
These bears were attracted to the remnants of a beluga carcass with nothing much left on it (lower right in the photo) and stayed around for at least a few days. The female with her cub-of-the-year was remarkably tolerant of an adult male nearby.
Continue readingComments Off on Some of the first polar bears onshore in Western Hudson Bay are in excellent condition
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged beluga, breakup, Churchill River, polar bear, sea ice, western hudson bay
I’ve been told that another complete aerial survey of the Western Hudson Bay polar bear subpopulation (from the Nunavut to Ontario boundaries) was conducted in August this year and that the bears have been hanging out further south than usual. It will be years before the results of the population count are published, of course (especially if it’s good news) but my contacts also say virtually all of the bears are in great condition again this year.
This is significant because W. Hudson Bay bears are one of the most southern subpopulations in the Arctic (only Southern HB bears live further south) and older data from this region is being used to predict the future for the entire global population based on implausible model projections (Molnar et al. 2020). And scary predictions of future polar bear survival are often taken to be proxies for future human disasters (see ‘Polar bears live on the edge of the climate change crisis‘), a point that some activists will no doubt make in the coming weeks, as the long-awaited UN climate change bash #26 (COP26) gets underway in Glasgow, Scotland on October 31.
Continue readingComments Off on No signs of a climate emergency for W. Hudson Bay polar bears this year ahead of UN climate meeting
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Polar bear attacks, Population, Sea ice habitat
Tagged beluga, body condition, breakup, climate change, CoP26, freeze-up, migration, polar bear, predictions, sea ice, western hudson bay
Polar bears leaping on the backs of belugas off Seal River, in western Hudson Bay, is being falsely promoted by the BBC’s new “Seven Worlds: One Planet” TV special as an unprecedented effect of climate change.
More specifically, the Daily Mail (30 November 2019) this morning quoted the documentary, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, as saying:
‘This extraordinary behaviour has only been recorded here, in this remote corner of North America, and only in the last few years.’
Poppycock. More climate change hyperbole from Attenborough’s seemingly never-ending litany of nonsense that’s easily refuted. There is scientific literature documenting such behaviour in Canada’s far north in the 1980s, which I included in the blog post I wrote about this phenomenon a few months ago (after National Geographic published a similar scare-story), which I have reposted below.
And from the sounds of it, there was no mention in the BBC special that freeze-up along western Hudson Bay was early again this year: for the third year in a row. So if the footage was filmed any time since 2017, the claim of accelerating sea ice loss in this region and bears on land for longer than ever is pure fantasy. PS. Fat bears are not ‘starving’.
Comments Off on BBC’s One Planet falsely claims that polar bears hunting whales from shore is an unprecedented effect of climate change
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Attenborough, BBC, beluga, climate change, Hudson Bay, hunting, polar bear, sea ice, Seven Worlds One Planet, shore, starving
This time National Geographic’s ‘Hostile Planet’ series laughably claims a fat polar bear that’s caught a beluga calf off the coast of Western Hudson Bay has been saved from starvation! The message: here is a prime example of climate change pushing a species to its limit. This is nonsense, of course: polar bears hunting beluga whales from rocks has nothing to do with climate change or desperately hungry bears. More importantly, there is a much better video of the action that is both more informative and truthful.
See both below and decide which you’d prefer your kids or grandkids to watch.
Comments Off on More starving polar bear nonsense from National Geographic & a better video to watch
Posted in Advocacy, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged beluga, calves, CBC, climate change, desperate, Hostile Planet, hungry, hunting, National Geographic, polar bear, propaganda, rock, Rolling Stone, sea ice, Seal River, starving, Suzuki, video, western hudson bay, whale
A part-time Arctic researcher eager for media attention suggested earlier today that the ice entrapment of narwhals in 2008 and again in 2015 at Pond Inlet (that made headlines around the world) was the result of “sudden changes in temperature” caused by climate change. This grossly misleading claim ignores the facts: ice entrapment of narwhals is an entirely natural feature of the Arctic that has been known about for hundreds of years.
“Narwhals: the ‘giant unicorn of the sea’ at risk from climate change” (CBC, 13 August 2016), a print version of a CBC Radio interview with Clint Wright that aired 8 August 2016. Wright is the general manager at the Vancouver Aquarium and apparently has “joined a team of researchers to tag and study” narwhals for several years – but does not seem to know much about the history or circumstances of natural ice entrapment.
Ice entrapment of small whales is nothing new. The first formally documented incident – in English – occurred in 1915 (Porsild 1918) and the phenomenon has probably occurred as long as there has been ice in the Arctic (millions of years).
Animals routinely become trapped in a few specific areas due to local geography: when ice that forms in the north moves south quickly, it blocks the entrances to inlets or coastal bays that still have open water. The presence of the pack ice causes nearby temperatures to drop quickly. Rapid development of ice on the bay proceeds from the mouth toward the head of the bay. Any whales present cannot escape to open water and will eventually die or be eaten.
Pond Inlet at the north end of Baffin Island is one such place but Disko Bay in western Greenland is another. In fact, Pond Inlet and Disko Bay are almost identical in geographic layout even though they lie on opposite sides of Baffin Bay, so it’s not surprising that both are locations of repeated entrapment events.
Three highly informative journal articles on the phenomenon of ice entrapment of narwhals and beluga are open access documents that reveal some fascinating details of such incidents, including polar bear predation on trapped whales. h/t T. Nelson Continue reading
Comments Off on Narwhal and beluga ice entrapment is natural – not caused by global warming
Posted in History, Life History, Sea ice habitat, Uncategorized
Tagged Arctic, baffin bay, beluga, climate, climate change, Clint Wright, Disko Bay, entrapment, facts, global warming, narwhal, polar bear, Pond Inlet, predation, prey, risk, sea ice, threatened, trapped, unicorn, Vancouver Aquarium, weather, whales
According to reports from folks on the ground in Western Hudson Bay, most polar bears were out on the ice resuming seal hunting by the 20th or 21st November at the latest (some got started quite a bit earlier). That’s less than 2 weeks later than the average date in the 1980s (which was November 8).
However, the rather odd pattern of freeze-up this year may not be good news for any killer whales still remaining in Hudson Bay – their access to the open ocean is already virtually blocked by ice.
UPDATE 26 November 2015: What a difference a day makes! Look at the spectacular ice development overnight along the west coast of Hudson Bay and in the central portion of the bay since yesterday (below).
Comments Off on W Hudson Bay polar bears now on the ice hunting but killer whales could be trapped
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged beluga, Cape Churchill, Churchill, freeze-up, Hudson Bay freeze-up, Hudson Strait, hunting, killer whale, Nanuk Lodge, polar bear, polar bear alert, problem bears, sea ice
It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada. As a special treat, I thought I’d point you in the direction of a delightful bit of video footage of beluga whales.
If you haven’t seen this Arctic Watch Beluga Foundation clip already, it’s worth a few minutes. It’s footage of belugas and their calves frolicking in the shallow water of Cunningham Inlet, on Somerset Island, Nunavut (within the Lancaster Sound polar bear subpopulation, which is north of the Gulf of Boothia subpopulation region that I discussed previously here and here).
While I previously surmised that Gulf of Boothia polar bears might hunt beluga from remnant ice during the summer in years when the ice doesn’t totally melt (like they do in Hudson Bay, see belugas as food for hungry polar bears), it appears they also successfully hunt beluga in shallow waters like those found in Cunningham Inlet. But there is no hunting footage in this post.
Link and further info below, including a map and references on beluga, and polar bear predation on beluga in this region.
Comments Off on Beluga whales frolic in the High Arctic
Posted in Life History
Tagged Arctic Watch Beluga Foundation, beluga, beluga whale, Cunningham Inlet, Delphinapterus leucas, DFO, Gulf of Boothia, High Arctic, Lancaster Sound, Monodon monoceros, narwhal, polar bears, Prince Regent Inlet, Somerset Island
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