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
According to the tracker map provided by Andrew Derocher (University of Alberta), all of the western Hudson Bay polar bear females that still have operational satellite collars (deployed in 2019) are still out on the ice of Hudson Bay. The Explore.org live video cam that sits on the shore of Wapusk National Park just south of Churchill has been capturing images of caribou and birds but so far, no polar bears. Last year, the first bear seen onshore by the cameras (shown in the video) was on 13 July.
It wasn’t until a month later that more bears were seen: the fat mother and cub in the screencap below were spotted on 18 July 2020 and the last of the collared bears didn’t come ashore until late August:
This year at 21 June, only 6 collars still operating but only one of them is anywhere close to shore yet (courtesy Andrew Derocher via twitter, below):
That ice in the middle of the bay is still primarily very thick first year ice, as the chart for this third week of June shows (below):
Continue readingComments Off on Polar bears of western Hudson Bay still on the ice at third week June
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged breakup, onshore, polar bear, sea ice, western hudson bay
The first report of the Polar Bear Alert Program in Churchill, Manitoba was released today (1 September), a full seven weeks later than last year due to many bears remaining on the Western Hudson Bay ice much later than they have done in the past.
As I mentioned previously, as long as I’ve been collecting these published reports (2015), there has not been a first report of the season issued later than the second week in July, so this year is really unusual and I suspect similar to the 1980s.
I thought it possible that this was a Covid-related delay getting conservation officers to Churchill but as you’ll see above, that appears not to be the case: there simply have been not enough serious problems with bears in Churchill to warrant sending officers out before last week. No information on the general condition of bears was included this year, as it has been in other years (see below). Activity this last week in August 2020 was similar to the first week in July 2018.
Comments Off on First polar bear alert report for Churchill an astonishing seven weeks later than last year
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged alert, breakup, Churchill, onshore, polar bear, problem bears, sea ice, western hudson bay
For all the hand-wringing over sea ice extent this year and its supposed similarity to 2012, what is truly remarkable is that at the end of July ice remains adjacent to every single major terrestrial summer refugia known to be important for polar bears. Those refugia sites include (from west to east, starting in the Chukchi Sea): Wrangel Island, western Chukotka, Severnaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land, East Greenland, virtually all the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (including Southampton Island in Foxe Basin and the southwest and eastern coasts of Baffin Island), and Western Hudson Bay.
Few bears spend the entire summer onshore along the Alaska coast: most still spend the summer on the sea ice and move with it as it contracts toward the Arctic Basin, as do many bears in the Barents, Kara, East Siberian, and Chukchi Seas. Until a few weeks ago, however, there was enough ice present that Beaufort Sea bears could go ashore if they wanted to do so. Continue reading
Comments Off on Sea ice adjacent to all major polar bear onshore summer refugia at 31 July 2019
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Population, Sea ice habitat
Tagged 2012, Churchill, extent, facts, Hudson Bay, July, onshore, polar bear, problem bears, refugia, sea ice, summer, terrestrial
What sounds like a mother and half-grown cub paid a visit to a cabin outside Black Tickle, Labrador and frightened the residents trapped inside. The aggressive female was part of at least 10 bears seen around the community on 14 April 2019 and photos of one of them show a bear in excellent condition. A bear in good condition was also spotted on the north coast of Newfoundland over the weekend, delivered to land by sea ice that’s moving back into the area after winds blew it offshore last month.
Near Black Tickle Labrador, mid-April 2019. Carrie Dyson photo.
Comments Off on Fat polar bears causing trouble onshore in Labrador plus sightings in Newfoundland
Posted in Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged aggessive, attack, condition, damage, fat bears, Labrador, Newfoundland, onshore, polar bear, problem bears, sea ice, sightings
There is now enough sea ice off southern Labrador and the northern tip of Newfoundland for Davis Strait polar bears to come ashore looking for food. Baby seals won’t be available for months yet. And since winter is the lean season for these bears, some may seek food sources onshore. The bears come down from the area of Hudson Strait and southern Baffin Island: as the sea ice expands south, so do the bears.
Comments Off on Heads up Newfoundland & Labrador: polar bear season has begun
Posted in Conservation Status, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged attacks, attractants, Black Tickle, Davis Strait, Labrador, onshore, polar bear, problem bears, sea ice, sightings, St. Anthony
Canadian biologist Andrew Derocher was called upon to promote his particularly pessimistic viewpoint on polar bear survival in a story published in the New York Times yesterday (2 December 2018: “Drilling in the Arctic: Questions for a Polar Bear Expert”). However, decades of evidence suggests that onshore oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is unlikely to harm the few female bears that come ashore in Alaska to make maternity dens.
Here is my rebuttal to Derocher’s claims, all of which I’ve dealt with previously.
Comments Off on Unfounded concern for polar bears from onshore oil exploration in Alaska
Posted in Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Alaska, analogy, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, climate change, denning, disturbance, multiyear ice, onshore, polar bear, sea ice, soil
Sea ice is said to be “an essential habitat for polar bears” but that’s an overly simplistic advocacy meme as ridiculous as the “no sea ice, no polar bears” message with which the public is constantly bombarded. Polar bears require sea ice from late fall to late spring only: from early summer to mid-fall, sea ice is optional. Historical evidence of polar bears that spent 5 months on land during the summer of 1874 proves an extended stay ashore is a natural response of polar bears to natural summer ice retreat, not a consequence of recent human-caused global warming. Sea ice is a seasonal requirement for polar bears: it’s not necessary year round.
[This PBI newsletter from 2011 repeats this meme and Andrew Derocher’s recent tweet conveys a similar message (“Sea ice loss = habitat loss for polar bears”)]
As long as sea ice is available from late fall through late spring (December to early June) and accompanied by abundant seal prey (sometimes it isn’t, see Derocher and Stirling 1995; Stirling 2002; Stirling et al. 1981, 1982, 1984), polar bears can survive a complete or nearly complete fast from June to late November (and pregnant females from June to early April the following year). That’s the beauty of their Arctic adaptation: fat deposited in early spring allows polar bears to survive an extraordinary fast whether they spend the time on land or sea ice.
Young and very old bears, as well as sick and injured ones, are the exception: these bears often come ashore in poor condition and end up dying of starvation — as a much-publicized bear on Baffin Island who likely had a form of cancer did last summer (Crockford 2018). Competition with bigger, stronger bears means these bears can’t keep what they are able to kill and they are most often the bears who cause problems. Starvation is the leading natural cause of death for polar bears because if they cannot put on the fat they need in spring, they will not survive the low food months of summer and winter, whether they are on land or out on the sea ice (Amstrup 2003). Continue reading
Comments Off on Sea ice is critical habitat for polar bears from late fall through late spring only
Posted in Advocacy, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic, climate change, essential, facts, global warming, habitat, onshore, polar bear, sea ice, sea ice day, summer, terrestral dens
Four bears were photographed outside of Red Bay, Southern Labrador on Thursday 8 March and a bear was spotted ashore in NE Newfoundland overnight on Wednesday.
Comments Off on More Davis Strait polar bears onshore in the last two days
Posted in Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged condition, cubs, Davis Strait, Labrador, Newfoundland, onshore, polar bear, sea ice, sightings, Strait of Belle Isle, triplets
Are the hundreds of polar bears spending the summer on Wrangel Island in the Chukchi Sea starving and desperate for any scrap of food? Hardly! Photos taken by Russian tourists on a cruise ship (19 September 2017) show a huge number of already-fat, healthy bears converging on a dead bowhead whale washed up on a beach. Most of these bears would have been without food since at least early August, when the last sea ice disappeared around the island, and will return to the ice by November.
This is what The Sun reported (29 September), based on a Siberian Times story (my bold):
The extraordinary sight was witnessed by tourists on an Arctic cruise aboard the Finnish-built MV Akademik Shokalskiy.
A source at Wrangel Island Nature Reserve said: “There were at least 230 polar bears, including single males, single females, mothers with cubs and even two mothers with four cubs each.”
Experts called the sight of so many polar bears together “unique”.
The huge number could in fact amount to as much one per cent of the entire world’s population of the creatures.
Tourists initially thought the bears were a flock of sheep after viewing them from a distance, The Siberian Times reports.
But as the boat drew closer, the lucky holidaymakers realised what they were witnessing.
Fat cubs of the year are seen in the photo below, from the Siberian Times story:
A self-proclaimed science-based news site (LiveScience, 29 September) that picked up the story of this unique event had the temerity to suggest the bears might have been “hungrier than usual” due to global warming.
It deliberately conflates predictions of future starving bears due to low sea ice levels with this observation of many obviously not-starving bears checking out an attractive food source (my bold):
“It’s unclear, however, whether climate change had made these particular bears hungrier than usual. The frequency of starving polar bears is expected to increase as the climate warms and sea ice declines — not just because of climate change directly, but because ice loss is taking away seals, their main food source, Steven Amstrup, chief scientist at Polar Bears International, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to studying polar bears, told Live Science in 2015.”
Except that there is no evidence that ice loss is “taking seals away” — certainly not in the Chukchi Sea. Chukchi Sea seals have been found to be doing better with less ice than they were when there was more ice in the 1980s.
More below, including the location of Wrangel Island and sea ice maps.
UPDATE 2 October 2017: Sea ice in the Chukchi Sea has been lower this summer than over the last few years but the polar bears spending the ice-free season on Wrangel Island are still in good to excellent condition:
Comments Off on Fat healthy polar bear update: hundreds of not-starving bears attracted to dead whale
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic, Chukchi Sea, fat, ice-free season, onshore, polar bears, Russia, Siberia, summer, whale, Wrangel Island
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