The shore of Alaska is not very important to Southern Beaufort polar bears – most of them stay on the sea ice during the summer and early fall, where they may or may not continue eating. These results of on-going satellite tracking studies by USGS1 confirm results of previous studies.
Comments Off on Tracking polar bears – 3 out of 4 S. Beaufort bears on the ice during September 2015
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Alaska, Beaufort Sea, Eliasson, Kaktovik, polar bear, satellite collars, sea ice, Southern Beaufort, tracking, USGS
If so, they’re not saying. This year, with higher-than-average sea ice, we’ve heard much less than usual about the location of tagged Hudson Bay polar bears. Odd, isn’t it?
By this time last year, Polar Bears International rep Alysa McCall had published two reports on the location WHB polar bears tagged by the University of Alberta research team led by Andrew Derocher (Fig. 1 below).
Figure 1. Sea ice coverage and locations of female polar bears with tracking collars for 30 June 2014 and 8 July 2014 (black, Western Hudson Bay bears; blue, Southern Hudson Bay bears), courtesy Alysa McCall, Polar Bears International. Click to enlarge.
This year, there’s been nothing: not a single PBI mention of WHB breakup. Derocher tweeted a track map on 6 July (2/9 bears ashore), with no updates since, but PBI’s “Bear Tracker” has not been updated since 2 July. Compare this year’s ice cover on Hudson Bay (and elsewhere in Canada) to last year on this date (14 July): quite a difference.
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Comments Off on It’s the middle of July – do researchers know where their Hudson Bay polar bears are?
Posted in Sea ice habitat
Tagged breakup, collars, Hudson Bay, polar bear science, polar bears, sea ice, Southern Hudson Bay, tracking, western hudson bay
Sixteen females with satellite collars plus one with a glue-on transmitter – down from 17 with collars and 6 with tags last month – all out on the ice during the month of June 2015.
Polar bears were captured by USGS biologists in 2014 and 2015 on the spring-time sea ice of the southern Beaufort Sea. The glue-on tags don’t seem to be holding up very well, with only one remaining out of the original eight deployed this spring.
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Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Southern Beaufort June 2015 – all 17 bears out on the sea ice
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Alaska, Chukchi Sea, extent, females, ice thickness, polar bear, satellite collars, sea ice, Southern Beaufort, tags, tracking, USGS
Sea ice coverage for Hudson Bay on 14 June converged on levels recorded in 2013, when breakup was slightly later than the average of the last two decades.
There is also more ice over Hudson Bay than there was in 2011, which was an early breakup year (charts for other Arctic regions here, originals here).
Andrew Derocher notes (via twitter) that rather than heading to shore, most of the Hudson Bay bears with satellite tracking collars (7/10) are out on the ice (Fig. 1 below). They appear to be hunting along the ice edge, where they are most likely to find seals.
Update 17 June 2015: Sea ice images for the week 18 June 2015 compared to other years added below, for Hudson Bay and the Beaufort Sea.
Comments Off on Same amount of sea ice for Hudson Bay polar bears as 2013, bears still on the ice
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic, breakup, Derocher, Hudson Bay, Lentfer, polar bear, polar bear movements, Polar Bears International, polarbearscience, ringed seals, satellite collars, sea ice, tracking, western hudson bay
Polar bear habitat in the Southern Beaufort for May 2015 was a contrast between the development of recurring polynyas (patches of open water) and tremendously thick sea ice. So it’s interesting to see where the polar bears tagged by USGS biologists chose to hang out.
The total number of bears being tracked in May – 23 – is down markedly from the 30 bears USGS biologists started with in April.
Most of the collared bears were concentrated in May along the shore lead (crack of open water) that normally develops between the shorefast ice and the pack ice offshore. That’s especially understandable this year, since most of that pack ice is 3-5 m thick (10-16 ft) – see the maps below.
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Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Southern Beaufort May 2015 – thick ice and polynyas
Posted in Sea ice habitat
Tagged Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea, habitat, open water, polar bear, polynya, satellite collars, sea ice, shore lead, spring sea ice, thick ice, tracking, USGS
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