Western Hudson Bay polar bears have been leaving shore for the rapidly thickening sea ice since at least 8 November (bear above was heading out 10 Nov.). However, Polar Bears International chose not to mention the unusually early freeze-up until the week-long (5-11 November) doomsday bombardment they call “Polar Bear Week” was almost over.
It’s worse than that: two days earlier, PBI’s activist spokesperson Steven Amstrup apparently told the Sierra Club (“People Show Up for Polar Bear Week, But the Ice Hasn’t Yet”; 8 November 2017) that “the bears are still waiting on shore for that ice to freeze” even though ice development had been well on its way for days at that point. As if freeze-up on 10 November came as a big surprise to him, with no warning whatsoever.
Apparently, they didn’t want their naive and gullible supporters to know at the beginning of Polar Bear Week that the sea ice loss of which PBI spokespeople rant about constantly (Save Our Sea Ice) was a total non-issue this year: breakup was not earlier than usual and new ice began developing off Churchill at about the same time it did in the 1980s (last week of October).
As I discussed last year regarding newly-published studies (Obbard et al. 2015, 2016) on the status of Southern Hudson Bay (SHB) bears:
“…SHB polar bears left the ice (or returned to it) when the average ice cover near the coast was about 5%. This finding is yet more evidence that the meteorological definition of “breakup” (date of 50% ice cover) used by many researchers (see discussion here) is not appropriate for describing the seasonal movements of polar bears on and off shore.”
That post (with its list of references) is worth another look for its discussion of the following points: the definition of freeze-up; the relationship of official freeze-up and breakup dates to the dates that bears depart; the overall health and survival of Western and Southern Hudson Bay polar bears.
Below I dissect the misinformation that PBI calls “science communication” in their attempt to minimize the damage caused by this early freeze-up to their message of looming catastrophe for polar bears.
Bottom line: Not only was freeze-up early this year, 2017 will go down as one of the earliest WHB freeze-up years since 1979 and for Southern Hudson Bay bears as well, since as of 13 November there is concentrated ice all the way into James Bay.
UPDATE 14 November 2017: CBC Radio broadcasted an interview yesterday with a recent visitor to Churchill who was remarkably candid about what he saw regarding polar bears, sea ice, and what he heard from locals about freeze-up (“the earliest since 1991”). It corroborates what I’ve reported here. Worth a listen (about 8 minutes):
“Brian Keating: Polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba” (The Homestretch, November 13, 2017, Season 2017, Episode 300312418)
The closest Doug Dirks has come to seeing a live polar bear was at the Calgary Zoo many moons ago. But naturalist Brian Keating has just returned from another trip to Churchill, Manitoba. He joined Doug Dirks with the details of that frosty adventure.
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