Hudson Bay in early July this year is a mosaic of more-than-average and less-than-average sea ice coverage but apparently, only the less-than-average ice areas constitute the “early breakup” caused by climate change, and only “deniers” would say otherwise.
I say some folks are cherry picking the ice conditions that support a story line they prefer, forgetting that polar bears know better than they do when to come in off the ice.
Continue readingComments Off on Natural flexibility explains W Hudson Bay polar bear movements at breakup better than climate change
Posted in Evolution, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged breakup, climate change, Derocher, evolution, ice charts, melt ponds, polar bear, sea ice, western hudson bay
According to Polar Bears International, the “3rd-earliest” breakup date for Western Hudson Bay was caused by a “record breaking” heat wave in May. Western Hudson Bay sea ice hit the 30% coverage threshold used by PBI to define “breakup” on 17 June this year, prompting speculation about potential future impacts on polar bear survival should breakup come even earlier.
“This year’s break-up date of June 17 is the 3rd earliest in the 45 years of satellite-based sea ice data from Western Hudson Bay, after 2015 and 2003.” [Flavio Lehner, PBI]
17 June 2023 is day 168 on the Julian calendar used to graph the data in the image included in the PBI essay (see copy below). However, the data point for 2003 is about three days earlier, on day 166 (14 June) and the point for 2015 is on day 152 (1 June).
If “record-breaking” heat caused this year’s early ice retreat, what caused the ice to retreat more than two weeks earlier in 2015? May was warm that year along the west coast as well but obviously not “record-breaking” warmth, because the records were broken this year. In fact, whatever warmth that occurred only affected ice melt in the western sector, while very thick ice over the rest of the bay resisted melt and allowed bears to stay out many weeks later than usual.
Continue readingComments Off on Early sea ice breakup in W Hudson Bay caused by “record breaking” warmth in 2023 but not 2015?
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged breakup, Churchill, Derocher, polar bear, predictions, satellite collars, sea ice, tagged bears, western hudson bay
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.
Continue readingComments Off on First tagged W Hudson Bay polar bear comes ashore
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged breakup, collared, Derocher, Hudson Bay, onshore, polar bear, sea ice, tagged
Hudson Bay has been oddly slow to freeze this year, which has led to a predictable bit of hand-wringing from certain biologists reiterating prophesies of polar bear population collapse. However, since 2009, the last time that freeze-up was anywhere near this late was 2016. In other words, far from this years’ late freeze-up being a picture of ‘the new normal,’ conditions in 2021 are actually unusual compared to the last twelve years.
Moreover, considering that 2021 fall ice formation for the Arctic in general is well ahead of 2016 (and every year since, except 2018), it’s hard to see why human-caused global warming caused by ever-increasing CO2 emissions explains the slow freeze-up of Hudson Bay. Timing of Hudson Bay freeze-up has always been highly variable from one year to the next (Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017: Fig. 3, copied below). The average freeze-up date in the 1980s was 16 November ± 5 days, while from 2005-2015 this had shifted about a week to 24 November ± 8 days (Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017:230). This year freeze-up was later than usual but last year and the three years before that the ice froze as early as it did in the 1980s. Cue the zombie apocalypse.
UPDATE 11 December 2021: see chart below from Andrew Derocher on the position of tagged WH bears at 10 December.
Continue readingComments Off on Promoters of polar bear catastrophe in Hudson Bay gloss over recent good ice conditions
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, science, Sea ice habitat
Tagged breakup, Derocher, freeze-up, ice-free season, PBI, polar bear, sea ice, time on shore, western hudson bay, York
The attack happened yesterday afternoon (10 August) about 2:30 PM local time near the community of Sanirajak (listed as Hall Beach on ice charts), which is in Foxe Basin, Nunavut (population about 800). There are few details yet on the human victims of the mauling other than that they were two women and a man. All three were badly injured. They are now in hospital and expected to survive.
It appears the bear died as a consequence of the attack but there has been no mention of its condition, age, etc., or the circumstances of the attack. There is no ethical reason for blaming this broad-daylight attack on lack of sea ice (although some will try), since there is abundant ice in the region at the moment, as the charts below show. Expect an update as the story unfolds.
Comments Off on Foxe Basin polar bear attack leaves three people seriously mauled, airlifted to hospital
Posted in Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged attack, Derocher, Foxe Basin, Hall Beach, mauling, polar bear, Sanirajak, sea ice
The chart below shows what sea ice thickness over Hudson Bay was like at the first week of May in a so-called a ‘good year’ (2019) – when polar bears came off the ice in excellent condition late in the summer and left early in the fall (‘thick first year ice’ is dark green and indicates ice greater than 1.2m thick):
Hudson Bay ice conditions this year appear to be shaping up to be as good or better than last year for polar bears yet specialist researchers and their cheerleaders have still been claiming that bears in this region – Western and Southern Hudson Bay – are doomed because of poor ice conditions. It’s no wonder they still haven’t published the data they’ve been collecting on polar bear body condition and cub survival over the last 15 years or so (Crockford 2020). With most field work cancelled for this year, what’s their excuse for not getting that done?
Continue reading
Comments Off on Sea ice more than 1.2m thick over Hudson Bay portends a good year for polar bears
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged body condition, Derocher, Hudson Bay, polar bear, polar vortex, sea ice, thick ice, threatened
Polar bear researcher Andrew Derocher says it takes four years of good sea ice conditions to recruit a polar bear from birth but implies that 2019 is the first year in decades that conditions for bears have been ‘good’ in Western Hudson Bay. He thinks he can get away with saying this because he hasn’t published any of the data on body weight and body condition he’s collected on these bears over the last 25 years (apparently, whatever funding agency pays for his research does not require him to publish the data he collects).
But independent observations such as dates of ice freeze-up in fall, ice breakup in summer, dates and condition of bears recorded onshore, suggest he’s blowing smoke: at least five out of five of the last sea ice seasons for WH bears have been good. That means we should be seeing more bears in the next official population count.
Comments Off on Western Hudson Bay polar bears in great shape after five good sea ice seasons
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged body condition, breakup, Derocher, fat bears, freeze-up, Hudson Bay, polar bear, sea ice, thriving
One of the first of hundreds of polar bears expected to come off the sea ice of Hudson Bay along the west and south coasts was captured on video on 5 July. This is only the first wave, as there is still so much ice remaining that most of the bears are likely to remain offshore: not because there is so much food available (few seals are caught at this time of year) but because the ice is where they are most comfortable.
Comments Off on First polar bear spotted off the ice in Western Hudson Bay is fat and healthy
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged breakup, Churchill, condition, Derocher, explore, fat, migration, polar bear, sea ice, western hudson bay
January is the first month of the Arctic winter, the season when most polar bears really struggle to find enough to eat.
Here is what the sea ice looked like around the Arctic at the end of this month.
Compare to last year:
Comments Off on Abundant polar bear habitat across the Arctic at the start of winter
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic, Barents Sea, Canada, denning, Derocher, East Coast, Franz Josef Land, polar bear, sea ice, Svalbard, winter
Earlier this year, I challenged a journalist to ask to see the data used by Andrew Derocher and his colleagues to support their repeated claims that Western Hudson Bay polar bears are having trouble surviving. It almost happened.
David Rose, writing for The Mail on Sunday, has produced an excellent feature on the conflict between Nunavut Inuit and biologists about polar bear management, got Andrew Derocher to tell the truth about current polar bear health and survival.
Or, to be more precise, to waffle a bit on his standard message of doom:
“Even Prof Derocher, who is convinced the bears’ long-term future is bleak, accepts that ‘the wheels are not coming off yet’, while ‘some bear populations are doing fine’. In West Hudson Bay, there has been ‘a recent period of stability’, he says, and though ‘we were seeing starving bears, starving cubs on land, that seems to have slowed down’. Then again, the computer models ‘are not great on the 5 – 10 year time-frame’, and it was possible that although the Arviat bears might look healthy now, they may be about to ‘fall off a cliff’.” [my bold]
This concession by Derocher suggests that Western Hudson Bay bears indeed are thriving, because he’s the guy who holds all the data. But he couldn’t help adding that disaster might be just around the corner.
But did he actually produce the data that show what’s been happening with cub survival or the body condition of females since 2004? Apparently not — but his admission that conditions are not as bleak as he continually portrays them suggests he is covering for data that says the same: polar bears in Western Hudson Bay are doing just fine and Inuit are right to be worried.
This may be as good as it gets unless the people of Nunavut can force Derocher to show his data.
Read the whole story here: “Why all you’ve been told about these polar bears could be WRONG: Animals driven to the edge of their natural habitat by shrinking ice have become one of the defining images of climate change, but Inuits who know the predators have a very different story.” (The Mail on Sunday, David Rose, 30 December 2018).
Comments Off on Derocher admits Western Hudson Bay polar bear population may not be declining
Posted in Conservation Status, Polar bear attacks, Population
Tagged Arviat, attacks, body condition, cub survival, Derocher, estimates, fat, Hudson Bay, polar bear, population, problem bears, sea ice
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