Arctic sea ice is beginning to melt and the end of spring is drawing near. Mating season is over for polar bears as is the gorging on young seals in most regions as weaned pups head into open water to feed for themselves. Only predator-savvy adult and subadult seals remain on the ice while they moult a new hair coat, so successful hunts by most polar bears will become more and more uncommon (e.g. Obbard et al. 2016).
Comments Off on Polar bear sea ice habitat near the end of Arctic spring 2023
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged hunting, melt season, sea ice, spring
Two recent incidents really remind me of the opening scene in my polar bear attack thriller, EATEN, and this time both were captured on film. They involved bears in good physical condition and luckily, no one has been hurt. There is still sea ice off the Northern Peninsula, which has brought the bears from the north.
On Sunday (10 April) in St. Anthony, a woman was alerted by her dog to what she though was someone on the front porch and found herself literally face to face with a polar bear when she opened the door; it then hopped up on her roof. The next day, in Goose Cove, a woman watched two bears (probably a female with a two year old male cub) explore the outside of a neighbour’s house and then walk across her driveway.
Continue readingComments Off on More fat polar bear sightings around homes on Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula
Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged fat bears, Goose Cove, Newfoundland, Northern Peninsula, polar bear, sea ice, spring, St. Anthony
Patches of open water in the Arctic that develop in the spring, including polynyas and widening shore leads, are largely due to the actions of wind and currents on mobile pack ice rather than ice melt. Contrary to concerns expressed about possible negative implications of these early patches of open water, these areas have always been critical congregation areas for Arctic seals and are therefore important feeding areas for polar bears in late spring.
Comments Off on Spring polynyas in the Arctic then and now as feeding areas for hungry polar bears
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged flaw lead, hunting, open water, polar bear, polynya, sea ice, seals, shore lead, spring
At the end of March there were two polar bear incidents on the same day in Svalbard, where one bear trashed a holiday cabin. Think a door or a window can keep out a polar bear? Think again!
Comments Off on Polar bear problems onshore in Svalbard before prime feeding season
Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Scientists hit back
Tagged destruction, polar bear, problem, sighting, spring, Svalbard
This updated blog post of mine from last year is as pertinent now as it was then: it’s a fully-referenced rebuttal to the misleading ‘facts’ so often presented this time of year to support the notion that polar bears are being harmed due to lack of summer sea ice. Polar Bears International developed ‘Arctic Sea Ice Day’ (15 July) to promote their skewed interpretation of polar bear science at the height of the Arctic melt season. This year I’ve add a ‘Polar Bears and the Arctic Food Chain‘ graphic, which readers are free to download and share. For further information, see “The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened“.
Comments Off on 10 fallacies about Arctic sea ice & polar bear survival refute misleading ‘facts’
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat, Summary
Tagged Arctic, Arctic sea ice day, facts, feeding, hunting, misinformation, myths, polar bear, sea ice, spring, summer, survival
Here are ice conditions at the end of May, which signals the near-end of the critical spring feeding period for polar bears. This is because young-of-the-year seals take to the water to feed themselves, leaving only predator-savvy adults and subadults on the ice from some time in June onward (depending on the region).
Spring is the critical feeding period for polar bears (Crockford 2019, 2020; Lippold et al. 2020; Obbard et al. 2016):
“Unexpectedly, body condition of female polar bears from the Barents Sea has increased after 2005, although sea ice has retreated by ∼50% since the late 1990s in the area, and the length of the ice-free season has increased by over 20 weeks between 1979 and 2013. These changes are also accompanied by winter sea ice retreat that is especially pronounced in the Barents Sea compared to other Arctic areas. Despite the declining sea ice in the Barents Sea, polar bears are likely not lacking food as long as sea ice is present during their peak feeding period. Polar bears feed extensively from April to June when ringed seals have pups and are particularly vulnerable to predation, whereas the predation rate during the rest of the year is likely low.“ [Lippold et al. 2019:988]
Comments Off on Spring feeding season almost over for polar bears & sea ice becomes less important
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Beaufort, Chukchi, feeding, Hudson Bay, open water, polar bear, polynya, sea ice, seals, spring, summer
Summer sea ice loss is finally ramping up: first year is disappearing, as it has done every year since ice came to the Arctic millions of years ago. But critical misconceptions, fallacies, and disinformation abound regarding Arctic sea ice and polar bear survival. Ahead of Arctic Sea Ice Day (15 July), here are 10 fallacies that teachers and parents especially need to know about.
The cartoon above was done by Josh: you can drop off the price of a beer (or more) for his efforts here.
As always, please contact me if you would like to examine any of the references included in this post. These references are what make my efforts different from the activist organization Polar Bears International. PBI virtually never provide references within the content it provides, including material it presents as ‘educational’. Links to previous posts of mine that provide expanded explanations, images, and additional references are provided.
Comments Off on 10 fallacies about Arctic sea ice & polar bear survival: teachers & parents take note
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat, Summary
Tagged Arctic, Arctic sea ice day, facts, feeding, hunting, misinformation, myths, polar bear, sea ice, spring, summer, survival
Polar bears in virtually all regions will now have finished their intensive spring feeding, which means sea ice levels are no longer an issue. A few additional seals won’t make much difference to a bear’s condition at this point, except perhaps for young bears that haven’t had a chance to feed as heavily as necessary over the spring due to inexperience or competition.
The only seals available on the ice for polar bears to hunt in early July through October are predator-savvy adults and subadults. But since the condition of the sea ice makes escape so much easier for the seals to escape, most bears that continue to hunt are unsuccessful – and that’s been true since the 1970s. So much for the public hand-wringing over the loss of summer sea ice on behalf of polar bear survival!
Polar bears in most areas of the Arctic are at their fattest by late June. They are well prepared to go without food for a few months if necessary – a summer fast is normal for polar bears, even for those that spend their time on the sea ice.
Putting on hundreds of pounds of fat in the spring to last through periods of food scarcity later in the year (at the height of summer and over the winter) is the evolutionary adaptation that has allowed polar bears to live successfully in the Arctic.
Continue reading
Comments Off on Spring feeding for polar bears is over – sea ice levels are now largely irrelevant
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic, bearded seal, ecosystem, facts, feeding, harp seal, ice loss, polar bear, research, ringed seal, save our sea ice, sea ice, sea ice day, spring, summer, video
Sea ice habitat for polar bears has not become progressively worse each year during their season of critical feeding and mating, as some scaremongers often imply. It’s true that absolute extent of Arctic ice is lower this spring than it was in 1979. However, according to NSIDC Masie figures, polar bear habitat at mid-May registers about 12 million km2, just as it did in 2006 (although it is distributed a little differently); other data show spring extent has changed little since a major decline occurred in 1989, despite ever-rising CO2 levels.
In other words, there has been virtually no change in sea ice cover over the last 12 years, despite the fact that atmospheric CO2 has now surpassed 410 parts per million, a considerable and steady increase over levels in 2006 which were about 380 ppm (see below, from the Scripps Oceanographic Laboratory, included in the Washington Post story 3 May 2018):
Not only that, but if rising CO2 levels were responsible for the decline of sea ice and implied effects on polar bears since 1979 (when CO2 levels were around 340 ppm), why has spring ice extent been so variable since 1989 (when the first big decline occurred) but so little changed overall since then? See the NSIDC graph below for April:
This year on day 134 (14 May), global ice cover registered 12.3 mkm2:
In 2016 on the same day, the overall extent was much the same but there was more ice in the Chukchi and Bering Seas and less in the eastern Beaufort:
More close-up charts of different regions below for 2018 vs. 2016, showing more detail.
Comments Off on Polar bear habitat update mid-May: little change since 1989 despite CO2 increase
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged carbon dioxide, climate change, CO2, facts, feeding, global warming, mating, polar bear, polynya, sea ice, shore leads, spring
Spring in the Arctic is April-June (Pilfold et al. 2015). As late April is the peak of this critical spring feeding period for most polar bear populations, this is when sea ice conditions are also critical. This year, as has been true since 1979, that sea ice coverage is abundant across the Arctic for seals that are giving birth and mating at this time as well as for polar bears busy feeding on young seals and mating.
Below is a chart of sea ice at 25 April 2018, showing sea ice in all PBSG polar bear subpopulation regions:
Some Arctic subregions below, in detail. Continue reading
Comments Off on Polar bear habitat update early spring 2018
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Barents Sea, birth, facts, feeding, mating, polar bear, population size, science, sea ice, seals, spring, Svalbard, thickness
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