Polar bears, including a litter of triplet cubs (a sign of very good health), are gathering near Churchill, Manitoba where new ice is forming along the coast. This means the fall seal hunt will soon begin, depending on the winds (it might be a few days from now or a few weeks).
See below for some of the images of bears on the shore of Wapusk National Park taken by Explore.org video cams from Tundra Buggy-based cameras, as well as the most recent Churchill problem bear report.
Continue readingComments Off on Polar bear triplet litter spotted near Churchill as ice starts to form along west coast of Hudson Bay
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged alerts, Churchill, Hudson Bay, new ice, polar bear, problem bears, sea ice, triplets, western hudson bay
Not even three weeks after the yearly minimum of sea ice extent was reached this year, new shorefast ice is already forming off the coast of Siberia, which is critical fall hunting habitat for polar bears.
So, not only was this year’s sea ice extent for September at the very lowest extreme of predicted levels for late summer, given ever-increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, new ice seems to be forming earlier in the fall as well, which bodes well for winter ice formation. It’s looking to me like the decade-long increasing trend of September ice extent since 2012 (see below) may indicate a change more biologically relevant to ice-dependent Arctic animals than the zero trend since 2007.
Comments Off on New polar bear hunting habitat forming already along the coast of the Laptev Sea: A new trend?
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged CO2, fall, habitat, hunting, ice formation, Laptev Sea, new ice, polar bear, sea ice, Siberia, summer, trends
Last year, an early freeze-up of Western Hudson Bay sea ice almost ruined the Polar Bear Week campaign devised by Polar Bears International to drum up donation dollars and public sympathy for polar bear conservation. Many bears were on the ice hunting by 7-8 November in 2017 before the celebratory week was done (the average date that bears left the ice in the 1980s): sea ice charts suggest the same may be happening this year.
Ice is forming along the Hudson Bay coast more than a week earlier than it was last year (barely discernible on the map below but detailed ice charts show it clearly), consistent with early build-up of ice in the Canadian Archipelago, East Greenland, and Foxe Basin since mid-September.
The question is: will the ice continue to build over the next few weeks or get blown offshore? See the ice charts below for this year and 2017.
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Comments Off on New ice on Hudson Bay a week earlier than 2017: another early freeze-up ahead?
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Churchill, freeze-up, gray ice, Hudson Bay, new ice, polar bear alert, polar bears, sea ice, shorefast ice, western hudson bay, winds
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