Tag Archives: winter

Polar bear habitat mid-winter update

Posted on February 18, 2016 | Comments Off

Sea ice extent in the Arctic is a bit below average this year at mid-winter but there are no data to suggest this situation will have a negative impact on polar bears.

Sea_ice_near_coast_of_Labrador_-b_wikimedia_sm_26 March 2007

[Photo above is sea ice off the coast of Labrador, Canada on 26 March 2007 (from Wikimedia): polar bears in the southern portion of the Davis Strait subpopulation have been particularly successful in recent years because in late March through May/June they hunt abundant numbers of young harp and hooded seals in this habitat]

Polar bear researchers presume that most animals eat little to nothing over the winter, because it explains why even non-pregnant bears are at their lowest weight at the beginning of spring.

Sea ice charts and maps below. Continue reading

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Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged facts, fast, harp seal, hooded seal, polar bear, sea ice, winter

Polar bear habitat at 26 January 2016

Posted on January 27, 2016 | Comments Off

There is still below average ice extent in the Barents Sea but there is no data whatsoever to indicate that this situation poses a problem for polar bears, given that as far as researchers know, polar bears eat little or nothing during the winter. That’s why the bears are at their leanest at the end of winter and why seal pups born in early spring are such a critical food source.

Note on map below (from WUWT Sea Ice Page, marked; original here) that polar bears are not found in three areas that are included in the total Arctic ice extent figures: below-average or above-average ice in the Sea of Okhotsk, Baltic Sea, and Gulf of St. Lawrence have no impact on polar bear health and survival.

Polar bear habitat at 26 Jan 2016_no bears marked_PolarBearScience_sm

Additional ice maps below. Continue reading

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Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Baltic, Barents Sea, Derocher, facts, fast, Gulf of St. Lawrence, polar bear, risk, sea ice, Sea of Okhotsk, t, threatened, winter

Polar bear survival: habitat 2013 vs. 2016 for 22 January

Posted on January 23, 2016 | Comments Off

Using sea ice maps issued by the National Sea Ice Data Center (NSIDC), it’s interesting to compare these two years with respect to polar bear health and survival (keeping in mind that no polar bears live in what I like to call the armpits of the Arctic – the Sea of Okhotsk, the Baltic Sea or in the Gulf of St. Lawrence)¹:

22 January 2016

Sea ice extent 2016 Jan 22 NSIDC

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Posted in Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Arctic, Baltic Sea, Barents Sea, darkness, Derocher, facts, feeding, Gulf of St. Lawrence, habitat, NSIDC, polar bear, sea ice extent, Sea of Okhotsk, spring, starving, survival, Svalbard, winter

Davis Strait polar bear habitat well above average for the first week of winter

Posted on January 7, 2016 | Comments Off

The region inhabited by the Davis Strait subpopulation of polar bears dips as far south as James Bay and has a history of highly variable sea ice coverage.

Canadian Arctic Jan 7 2016_CIS

For the last two years Davis Strait sea ice in March has been well above average, while other years it been well below. You might be surprised to hear that 1969 had the lowest February/March ice coverage over the entire the 1969-2002 record (Johnston et al. 2005: 211), which ice charts show now extend to 2015 (see below). Reports of sealers working north of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the first few decades of the 20th century show this variability has likely always been a characteristic of the area (Ryan 2014).

Remarkably, this year’s ice coverage for the first week in January is well above what they were in 2014 and 2015 – even though those two years were above average by March. In fact, there hasn’t been this much polar bear habitat in the Southern Labrador Sea in the first week of January since at least 1993.
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Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Atlantic Canada, Canadian Ice Service, Davis Strait, East Coast, facts, James Bay, Labrador Sea, polar bear, sea ice, sealers, variability, winter

Many polar bears cubs seen in Svalbard this year, says Norwegian biologist

Posted on June 24, 2015 | Comments Off

Good news from Norway: polar bears around Svalbard are in excellent condition this spring and many females with new cubs have been spotted. This is a marked turn around from conditions just last year.

Roy Mangersnes / Wildphoto

According to a Norwegian news outlet yesterday, Jon Aars (Fig. 1, below), from the Norwegian Polar Institute, confirms that this has been an excellent year for polar bear cubs around Svalbard because there has been abundant sea ice near denning areas on the east coast.

Figure 1. Biologist Jon Aars with a Svalbard cub.

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Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged AMO, Arctic, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, Barents Sea, body condition, cubs, denning, fall, Franz Josef Land, Jon Aars, Madden-Julian Oscillation, Norwegian Polar Institute, NSIDC, polar bear, science, sea ice, spring, Svalbard, winter

Polar bears out on the sea ice eat few seals in summer and early fall

Posted on February 9, 2015 | Comments Off

We hear endlessly about the polar bears ‘forced’ to go without food for months because of receding summer sea ice — what about all the bears that stay out on the ice over the summer? Presumably, those bears keep hunting for seals – but how many do they actually catch?

[Update 9 February 2015: Just to be clear, this post is based on the facts available in the peer reviewed literature — if you think I have missed something, let me know via the “Contact us” page above]
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Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Arctic, Beaufort, Central Canadian Arctic, declining sea ice, fall, feeding, feeding platform, gorging, hunting, hyperphagia, Pilfold, polar bear, seal kills, seal pups, seasons, spring, Stirling, summer, terrestrial foods, winter