The evidence that polar bears have not been harmed by recent declines in sea ice is contained in the scientific literature, no matter what some researchers say when they talk to the media.
Here’s a few of those facts (not all, by any means), with the references to back them up:
Continue reading
Comments Off on Some inconvenient polar bear facts supported by scientific literature
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat, Summary
Tagged Amstrup, Beaufort Sea, climate change, facts, global warming, polar bear, sea ice, Southern Beaufort, threatened, USGS
Here’s the update on the polar bears fitted with satellite collars or ear tags in the Beaufort by USGS biologists over the last two years. Five new bears were added last month, which means there are now thirteen bears being tracked. Ice conditions are somewhat different than they have been in the past but concluding that such a situation means trouble is premature, I think (see here). Continue reading
Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea in April 2016 and early polynya formation
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged bearded seals, Beaufort Sea, Cape Bathurst, facts, open water, polar bear, polynya, ringed seals, satellite collars, sea ice, seals, thick sea ice, tracking, USGS
Five more bears were tagged near the Southern Beaufort Sea coast last month, all in the western portion of the coast where Chukchi Sea bears are often encountered. They join the one female who seems to have made a den way out over the continental shelf, where she’s been all winter.
This is the March 2016 follow-up to my post on the July 2013 track map for female polar bears being followed by satellite in the Beaufort Sea by the US Geological Survey (USGS) – “Ten out of ten polar bears being tracked this summer in the Beaufort Sea are on the ice.”
Five tagged bears are relatively few compared to eight last spring, and thirteen in 2013 [added to 7 from the previous year for a total of twenty, which were down to 13 by June] but the same as five tagged in 2014. This spring, three of the USGS tagged bears have glue-on transmitters, which means they are either males or juvenile bears rather than females (which are fitted with collars):
“In collaboration with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service we are also experimenting with glue-on and ear tag satellite transmitters, which can be deployed on adult male bears and younger, still-growing bears.”
Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea – new crop of tagged bears for 2016
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Barrow, Beaufort Sea, glue-on transmitters, ice thickness, sea ice, tagging, thick spring ice, tracking polar bears, USGS
A new paper that combines paleoclimatology data for the last 56 million years with molecular genetic evidence concludes there were no biological extinctions [of Arctic marine animals] over the last 1.5M years despite profound Arctic sea ice changes that included ice-free summers: polar bears, seals, walrus and other species successfully adapted to habitat changes that exceeded those predicted by USGS and US Fish and Wildlife polar bear biologists over the next 100 years.
Cronin, T. M. and Cronin, M.A. 2015. Biological response to climate change in the Arctic Ocean: the view from the past. Arktos 1:1-18 [Open access] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41063-015-0019-3
Thomas Cronin is a USGS paleoclimatologist at the Eastern Geology and Paleoclimate Science Center, and Matthew Cronin is a molecular geneticist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (see previous posts here and here about Matt’s work on the genetics of polar bear evolution).
From the Abstract:
Arctic climatic extremes include 25°C hyperthermal periods during the Paleocene-Eocene (56–46 million years ago, Ma), Quaternary glacial periods when thick ice shelves and sea ice cover rendered the Arctic Ocean nearly uninhabitable, seasonally sea-ice-free interglacials and abrupt climate reversals.
The final discussion and two summary graphics from this paper (copied below) are especially useful:
Comments Off on Paleoclimate + genetic study confirms: Arctic species adapted to sea ice changes
Posted in Evolution, Sea ice habitat, Summary
Tagged adaptation, Arctic, arctic seals, biological responses, climate change, climate extremes, Cronin, evolution, facts, genetics, glacial, he, ice-free summer, information, interglacial, LGM, marine mammals, paleoclimate, polar bear, resilience, sea ice, USGS, walrus
I’ve combined the months of November and December for this post on USGS polar bear tracking in the Beaufort Sea because there’s not much to tell: there’s one tagged bear left and she’s going almost nowhere. Where’s the news in that?
Movements of 1 satellite-tagged polar bear female for the month of November, 2015; shown with sea ice coverage at 30 November 2015. This bear was tagged in the spring of 2015 in the Southern Beaufort Sea. See original image here and December movements below.
Actually, it does tell us something: this female is probably in a sea ice den, a relative common phenomenon in the Beaufort Sea. And she’s on ice that’s out over very deep water. Continue reading
Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea – one tagged bear left at year end 2015
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic, bathymetry, Beaufort Sea, birth, continental shelves, cubs, facts, females, maternity dens, polar bear, tracking, USGS
I’ve updated my post from last week to reflect that an inquiry to USGS has generated a statement that the Beaufort Sea polar bear reported by CBC last week is NOT one of their bears. Apparently University of Alberta researchers were also tagging polar bears in the region.
See details in the updated post here.
Kaktovik, where the bear was photographed, is not too far from the Canadian border of the Southern Beaufort Sea subpopulation, see USGS tracking map below.
Original caption: “Movements of 3 satellite-tagged polar bears for the month of October, 2015. Polar bears were tagged in 2014 and 2015 on the spring-time sea ice of the southern Beaufort Sea. All 3 of these bears have satellite collar transmitters. Polar bear satellite telemetry data are shown with AMSR2 remotely-sensed ice coverage for 31 October, 2015.” Click to enlarge.
How long is it going to take for the people responsible to own up to this situation – and more importantly, remove the tight collar from the bear?
Comments Off on Who tagged the Beaufort Sea polar bear with the tight collar?
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History
Tagged Beaufort Sea, Kaktovik, polar bear, tight collar, University of Alberta, USGS
All three of the females with radio collars installed by USGS last spring (see footnote below) spent October out on the sea ice – which suggests the Kaktovik female with the tight collar that made the news last week was either wearing a failed collar, USGS removed her icon from the map, or she was not wearing a USGS collar.
It is possible that the poor bear was the one represented by the purple icon from last month (see map below), the only USGS collared bear that was on shore during September and still sending signals. The bear in the above photo was photographed in Kaktovik, easy walking distance for a bear, near the end of October. The purple icon on shore in the September USGS map is no longer present this month.
As far as I know, there has been no follow-up information on the fate of this bear: we still don’t know whether the collar has yet been successfully removed.
Continue reading
Comments Off on Tracking polar bears in the Beaufort Sea – all three bears on the ice during October 2015
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic, Beaufort Sea, satellite collars, sea ice, tight collar, tracking polar bears, USGS
A report at CBC News (“Photo shows polar bear injured by tight radio collar,” Martin Zeilig, 28 October 2015) shows the bloodied neck of a male Southern Beaufort Sea polar bear, taken near Kaktovik, Alaska, whose radio collar is too tight.
Researchers should not be putting collars on young animals and male bears – they know the problems! Who did the USGS have working for them that did not know this – or couldn’t tell a male bear from a female? [see below] The other question is: how many more bears are in the same condition but out of sight on the sea ice – or dead due to their injuries? Don’t forget, this is a population that researchers claim is endangered because of climate change but which really declined recently due to thick spring ice in 2004-2006. [SJC – ambiguity fixed]
UPDATE 28 October 2015: 5:41 pm – in a comment under the CBC story, Churchill polar bear guide Kelsey Eliasson wrote (“4 hours ago”):
“This isn’t a he, it’s a she. Saw this bear during our trip, its a female with one cub.
Male polar bears are not radio collared.”
The statement in the CBC article that the bear with the collar is a male thus seems to be an error. That makes more sense but does not negate the suffering of the animal.
UPDATE 5 November 2015: 8:30 am – I just received an email from a reader who contacted USGS about this bear and with their permission, I have copied the response below (leaving out the USGS contact person’s details), my bold:
Hello xxxx,
I do not believe USGS banded the bear. I have talked with staff at the USGS Alaska Science Center and found that the polar bear in the news was an adult male. The USGS scientists will band female polar bears, but not male bears. If you have questions, see this site. there is a link to the staff on the left. Click it and you will see a list with the project manager at the top. http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/biology/polar_bears/tracking.html
It may be that USGS is accepting the word of one of the experts quoted in the story [Vince Crichton] that the bear is a male and have denounced their involvement on that basis. Obviously, other polar bear researchers must be working in the area, and Geoff York statements (below) suggest a crew from University of Alberta, led by Andrew Derocher. But if Kelsey Eliasson is right that this is a female with a cub (see above update), it may indeed be a USGS bear, perhaps one who’s collar has stopped transmitting. The plot thickens.
Continue reading
Comments Off on Sickening effect of satellite radio collars polar bear researchers don’t want you to see
Posted in Conservation Status
Tagged Beaufort Sea, injured, invasive research, Kaktovik, neck, PGSG, polar bear, satellite collars, Southern Beaufort, tight, USGS, western hudson bay, WWF, York
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
Two out of seven polar bears with collars in the Southern Beaufort Sea either spent the month of August on ice that satellites couldn’t see – or they spent the entire month swimming around the Beaufort. Which seems most likely?
See previous discussions here and here regarding the problem satellites have in accurately detecting melting ice. The presence of these two bears is evidence that there is more polar bear habitat than satellites record as officially present. This was also an issue for Hudson Bay bears earlier this year.
Five out of the seven visible females were on the ice in August – but are the other six bears that were visible last month spending the summer in the Arctic Basin like the one I reported last week? Or have their collars actually failed or dropped off? USGS isn’t saying.
See the August track map below, from the USGS Tracking Polar Bears website1 and a sea ice map.
Continue reading
Comments Off on Tracking polar bears – two S. Beaufort bears spent August 2015 on ice that doesn’t exist
Posted in Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic basin, Beaufort, polar bear, satellite collars, satellite maps, sea ice, summer, swimming, USGS
You must be logged in to post a comment.