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via YouTube – Polar bears and dogs playing .

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Freeze Frame » Bothy at Ryvingen in his polar gear seldom needed and despised by him.

Sometimes, in the course of my research, I stumble across an image I just have to share. This is one of those times.

The Scott Polar Research Institute’s Freeze Frame project provides access to digital reproductions of images from both Arctic and Antarctic expeditions from the nineteenth century through to the present day. There are some great images from polar history, including everyday shots of explorers (and their dogs) at home at either pole.

Related Content: Graham Dickson in Face to Face: Polar Portraits

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Barring a colder fall, residents of Arviat, Nunavut may find themselves confronting a larger-than-normal polar bear population. The CBC reports:

Residents in the hamlet of 2,000 feared for their safety a year ago this month, when an unusually high number of polar bears were spotted roaming through the community as part of their fall migration south.

Resident Annie Ollie told CBC News that a few polar bears have already wandered near her house on the edge Arviat. She and her family are now on high alert, said Ollie, speaking in Inuktitut.

Declining sea ice may be to blame for the influx of bears, according to local conservation officer Joe Savikataaq.

If we have a quick freeze-up and the ice goes far out from the land, then we shouldn’t have too much of bear problems,” Savikataaq said. “But if the ice keeps breaking off like last year, then we may have the same number of bears again.

“What was happening last year, we kept getting strong winds off the land and it would break the fresh ice that’s forming and take it away.”

via CBC News – North – Arviat on polar-bear watch again.

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A beluga comes face-to-face with Arctic Kingdom divers

This Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle had a fun travel feature on beluga whales. What I like most about the article is how fascinated writer John Finn is by how expressive beluga faces are. Sometimes, it’s not exactly flattering:

Mostly they kept a short distance away, but a few curious ones came close and poked their heads out of the water for a better look, submerging before I could judge their facial expressions. But I can report that one whale, with a big, fat wrinkle across its brow, looked disturbingly like comedian Don Rickles.

But the piece really does capture the magic of seeing the whales face to face:

A mother and calf swam parallel to us. Another pair surfaced right next to our bow and nuzzled our kayak.

Then a bulbous white head poked out of the water, close enough to touch with my paddle, had I wanted to. We briefly made eye contact. Then, before I could get a good read on its facial expression, it disappeared and popped up near our bow. It made eye contact with my wife, Jeri, in the kayak’s front seat.

This time I got a better look. Its face showed, as best I could tell, curiosity tinged with apprehension. If it could read our expressions in turn, they would have been filled with wonder.

via In Churchill, Manitoba, snorkel with belugas.

Try to read a beluga’s expressions, or search for the Don Rickles look-alike whale on one of Arctic Kingdom’s many Arctic adventures!

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via BBC – Earth News – Polar bear cub hitches a ride.

The BBC’s got an interesting article up reporting on this polar piggyback phenomenon and exploring some of the reasons polar bear cubs might need to hitch a ride. Is it to keep delicate cubs out of the cold Arctic water, or is it to speed up treks across the ice? Further research is warranted, but one thing’s for sure: it’s pretty darn cute.

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Seals are among the species threatened by warming oceans

One of the things I get asked most often when I tell people about writing for Arctic Kingdom is, “Is there any truth to this ‘Global Warming’ thing?”

I like to see it as a sort of touching optimism. The news I read every day contains more and more bad news about melting glaciers, endangered animals, and changing weather patterns all over the world. The arctic we see on our expeditions is changing, with warmer summers, less ice, and rising sea temperatures. It would be nice if it were all a matter of opinion, but the evidence seems clear: the world’s climate is being transformed.

And the scientific community agrees. In a recent issue of the Journal Science, scientists around the globe reviewed evidence from the International Polar Year, concluding that climate change threatens species throughout the Arctic.

“It seems no matter where you look — on the ground, in the air, or in the water — we’re seeing signs of rapid change,” said biologist Eric Post of Penn State University.

The report says that a warming of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 150 years has already caused dramatic consequences.

It cautions that further changes resulting from the projected six-degree warming over the next century will be difficult to predict.

Ivory gulls, ringed seals, polar bears and narwhals are examples of species with a small distribution and specialized habitats, leaving them vulnerable to being the first species to suffer from climate change.

via Earth Week:New Arctic Emerging From Climate Change.

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In keeping with this week’s polar bear theme, here’s an article on Churchill’s polar bears from Sunday’s Washington Post. I especially liked this description of a bear encounter.

…. off to the side, among the willows, my eye caught movement. I looked again. This was no optical illusion. A polar bear was ambling, ever so slowly, in our direction.

It was moving as polar bears do: seemingly aimlessly, languorously, its head and neck occasionally swaying loosely and slowly from side to side. I put my camera to my eye, but even at the fullest extent of my telephoto lens, the bear was little more than a small white blob, barely large enough to occupy the very center of my picture frame. Whispering to myself, I urged it forward as it wandered toward us.

But however relaxed a polar bear’s stride may be, it can effortlessly eat a great deal of distance in a surprisingly short space of time, and by the time I had bundled up and slipped out onto the buggy’s rear deck, the bear was no more than 30, 40 yards away, casually looking up at me as it advanced. Like a ghost, its approach was silent until, suddenly it was so close that its head and then just its snow-dappled muzzle filled my viewfinder. I lowered the camera and looked the animal in the eye as it looked up at me.

Only now, with the bear perhaps two or three yards below my elevated position, did I finally hear an almost imperceptible noise: a soft crunch of snow beneath its massive paws. The bear paused and considered me. Then it huffed out a short breath and padded past the buggy and across the tundra, never looking back.

via Arctic Blast: A Canada Town Is Polar Bear Central – washingtonpost.com.

Want to see it for yourself? Visit our trips page for information about polar bear viewing opportunities throughout the Arctic.

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Maybe it’s Knut’s influence. Over the last few months, several German-language films about the plight of polar bears in the wild have hit both the television market and the big screen.

The latest film to come across my radar is Im Einsatz fur Eisbaren, featuring the German actor Hannes Jaenicke. Jaenicke travels to the Canadian Arctic to investigate the threats, including climate change and hunting, facing polar bears in the wild.

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One of the surprising things about the world beneath the Arctic ice is how colorful it can be.

There were a lot of surprises,” says biologist Dr Kevin Raskoff of Monterey Peninsula College in California, US, a leading member of the dive team.

“One thing was just how many different jellies there were, and the sizes of their populations.”

“Some were somewhat well known from other oceans, but had not previously been found in the Arctic. That caused us to rethink our ideas about what the typical habitat would be for the species. We also discovered a number of new species that had not been found before.”

During a series of dives to depths of 3000m, the ROV filmed over 50 different types of gelatinous or jelly-like animal.

BBC – Earth News – Strange jellies of the icy depths.

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