Davis Strait pack ice is now descending on the Labrador coast. Only slightly later than usual but it looks like there’s plenty of it.
This is the ice that brings polar bears to Newfoundland and southern Labrador (photo above from April 2022). Be careful what you ask for…
Continue readingComments Off on Here comes the pack ice for the Canadian East Coast
Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Alone Frozen, Davis Strait, East Coast, Labrador, Newfoundland, polar bear, sea ice, sightings
Davis Strait ice pack is slowly moving south this year just as shorefast ice is developing in-place along the Labrador shoreline, similar to last year. East Coast harp seals that give birth in the region in March depend on this ice and so do many Davis Strait polar bears that feed on those newborn seals. In contrast, in 2017 the ice off Labrador was broader by mid-January (even more so by mid-February) and that seems to have made a huge difference by April, when ice north of Newfoundland was thick and extensive.
Compared to last year at this time, there was somewhat less ice along the Labrador coast but the difference is really negligible. By April, ice extent was well below average, especially in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and there were few sightings of polar bears along the Labrador and Newfoundland coasts.
Back in 2017 at the same time (below), the band of ice along the southern Labrador coast was much broader, indicating more movement of Davis Strait ice from the north. This resulted in so many polar bear sightings in Newfoundland and Labrador by March and April that I could hardly keep up reporting them (Crockford 2019:32):
East coast conditions could change significantly over the next few weeks however, especially if weather conditions bring more north winds.
References
Crockford, S.J. 2019. State of the Polar Bear Report 2018. Global Warming Policy Foundation Report 32, London. PDF here.
Comments Off on East Coast sea ice so far similar to last year
Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged East Coast, Labrador, Newfoundland, polar bear, problem bears, sea ice, sightings
Sea ice across the Arctic in the first week of February is a mix of highs and lows. Bering Sea is back up to almost normal coverage, as is the Barents Sea. However, ice coverage on the East Coast of Canada is the lowest its been in four decades. This is not yet a worry for polar bears because harp seals don’t pup until mid-March in this region so there is at least four weeks of potential ice growth that can happen before the seals are forced to pup on much reduced ice – where polar bears are sure to find them.
Here is a close-up look at sea ice conditions by region at the edges of the Arctic. Continue reading
Comments Off on Polar bear sea ice habitat highs and lows in early February
Posted in Sea ice habitat
Tagged Barents Sea, Bering Sea, East Coast, harp seal, polar bear, pupping habitat, sea ice, Svalbard
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
Polar bear season for St. Lunaire-Griquet Newfoundland ran from 6 March to 10 June this year — three long months when polar bears came to visit the community during the season when bears are usually occupied with feeding on young seals and mating.
Below is a map of the region: St. Lunaire-Griquet is at the tip of the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland, just north of St. Anthony (where some of the action in my polar bear attack thriller, EATEN, takes place):
As of yesterday (June 10), when the last sighting of a fat and healthy polar bear took place, there was still quite a mass of thick first year ice (>1.2 m thick) off the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, amongst a field of icebergs:
The first sighting in the area this year was back in early March, which I blogged about here. Fortunately, the Davis Strait bears that occupy the East Coast pack ice are usually well feed at this time of year and seldom pose a serious threat to humans: the fact that visitors ashore are often easily pursuaded to leave (or do so on their own) suggests they are more curious than hungry.
Comments Off on Lingering late season sea ice brings polar bear visitor to northern Newfoundland
Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged ashore, East Coast, Eaten, harp seal, icebergs, Newfoundland, polar bear, sea ice, sightings, St. Anthony
The hot polar bear news right now is the large number of sightings of bears onshore in Newfoundland and Labrador – even the CBC is impressed.
Photo taken by Brandon Collins in Melrose (on the Trinity Bay side of the peninsula) Monday 3 April 2017
All the bears have been brought to land by the abundant pack ice that’s been present off Labrador and northern Newfoundland (the territory of Davis Strait polar bears), which also killed a humpback whale that got trapped against the north shore (a not unusual event, apparently).
Mapping the reports of polar bear sightings since early March helped me get a handle on the total number of encounters: more than a dozen, it turns out. There have been a few bear sightings in this region every year recently but such high numbers are remarkable, especially so early in the season. When will it end?
Increased numbers of bears in the population is one explanation for increased numbers of encounters onshore at this time of year, although recent storms may have encouraged more bears than usual to come ashore in Newfoundland.
My picture annotated map and a list of sighting reports, with links, is below but stay tuned: this story may not be over yet.
UPDATE 4 April: more photos and sea ice maps added below.
UPDATE 5 April: another sighting, in St. Brendan’s (west of Bonavista), added to the map below and quotes from one witness. The map is now Version 2. A sea ice map for 5 April has also been added at the end of the post.
UPDATE 9 April: another sighting and a bear casualty, see below. Map revised again.
UPDATE 14 April: CBC Newfoundland article (12 April: “Highway of ice: Easy route for polar bears chasing food, prof says“) based on my radio interview that aired 11 April.
UPDATE 22 April: Another sighting west of St. Anthony on Wednesday, 19 April has been added to the map (now Version 4) and an alert that I’ve added a new post (21 April) about the claim by one vocal polar bear specialist that all of these sightings are the result of “failed” sea ice conditions off Newfoundland and Labrador this year (seriously, I’m not making this up). I’ve added the most recent ice map at the end of this post.
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Comments Off on East Coast crawling with polar bears since early March thanks to the pack ice
Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged East Coast, encounters, Labrador, Newfoundland, onshore, photos, polar bear, sightings, spring, winter
The region inhabited by the Davis Strait subpopulation of polar bears dips as far south as James Bay and has a history of highly variable sea ice coverage.
For the last two years Davis Strait sea ice in March has been well above average, while other years it been well below. You might be surprised to hear that 1969 had the lowest February/March ice coverage over the entire the 1969-2002 record (Johnston et al. 2005: 211), which ice charts show now extend to 2015 (see below). Reports of sealers working north of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the first few decades of the 20th century show this variability has likely always been a characteristic of the area (Ryan 2014).
Remarkably, this year’s ice coverage for the first week in January is well above what they were in 2014 and 2015 – even though those two years were above average by March. In fact, there hasn’t been this much polar bear habitat in the Southern Labrador Sea in the first week of January since at least 1993.
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Comments Off on Davis Strait polar bear habitat well above average for the first week of winter
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Atlantic Canada, Canadian Ice Service, Davis Strait, East Coast, facts, James Bay, Labrador Sea, polar bear, sea ice, sealers, variability, winter
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