THE BEAR FACTS ON THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF THE ARCTIC
We learn about the challenges to polar bears’ survival in Canada’s north
“Polar bears off the portside bow.”
That mid-afternoon announcement changed everything.
Fortunately, a pair were sighted before a rifle-toting team even had a chance to go ashore to clear a landing site, which means making sure there aren’t any polar bears around.
The plan had been to do some hiking on the fog-enshrouded island to see an abandoned RCMP detachment, as well as the remnants of a 500-year-old Thule settlement.
But with bears on the beach, there would be no hiking and no kayaking.
Polar bears are the kings and queens of the Arctic — no animal is more dangerous or powerful, except a human with a gun.
They are the animal most respected and feared by the Inuit. They figure prominently in both art and stories.
Over the years, polar bears have had incredibly good PR. Cute? Absolutely. But there is nothing cuddly about them.
So, “rug’d up” in warm and waterproof clothes, we set off on a Zodiac safari to hunt bears with our cameras from the water.
The convoy of Zodiacs approached cautiously and from the side, with Angulalik Pedersen, a technical science adviser to Polar Knowledge Canada, and Jody Reimer, who is doing her doctoral research on polar bears at the University of Alberta, monitoring the female and her cub to ensure that they weren’t stressed by our approach.
At first, the skinny mother was alert. Her snout held high, testing the air for a scent and a hint of who or what was approaching.
Her hip bones protruded — never a good sign — but there was evidence that she was still lactating. Beyond that, the cub looked plump and healthy, and was believed to be about eight months old, born during the past winter.
It seems counter-intuitive that in summer — traditionally a time of plenty — polar bears might be starving. But the bears have evolved to thrive in the winter.
No one is sure how fast they can move because Reimer says the bears can only run for about 12 minutes before they overheat in the summer.
Their thick coats and hollow hair fibres protect them from the cold. Even their massive paws with long claws are insulated with fur. Their snouts are narrow and their necks are long so that they can more easily reach seals surfacing at their breathing holes in the ice.
It’s why sea ice is so important to them. It’s why declining sea ice puts them at such risk.
In the summer, females with cubs emerging from snow dens have already gone for months without food and without hibernating (unlike grizzlies, to which polar bears are most closely related).
This particular female and her cub were feeding on what appeared to be the dried carcass of a narwhal. The evidence was the distinctive long tusk.
Pedersen and Reimer weren’t sure how or why the narwhal had ended up on a bluff above a beach. Perhaps it had been tossed up there in high seas. Maybe its head with the tusk had been dragged to higher ground by a predator.
The female would get little that she needs from the carcass,
For 12 days, I am one of a group of privileged visitors, including two scientists from the Vancouver Aquarium, on a 96-passenger expedition ship operated by Squamishbased One Ocean Expeditions making a journey through the Northwest Passage.
Reimer said, because what polar bears need most is fat, blubber from seals or walrus.
And in summer, there is little of that readily available because seals are almost impossible for polar bears to catch in open water. Instead, they make do with moulting birds, chicks, eggs, berries, plants and even seaweed.
But polar bears’ reproduction has also evolved.
They never travel in groups other than a mother and up to two cubs. It makes survival easier. Mating happens opportunistically, and there is evidence that females can have “twins” from two separate fathers.
But one of the most unusual adaptations is that polar bears are able to put off the implantation of a fertilized egg in the womb until their bodies are fattened and healthy enough to support an embryo.
Should it be a harsh winter with scarce food, the fetus will be aborted. If there are twins, one could be aborted.
And if a female can’t forage enough for herself and her cub to last until winter, she will quit lactating and her cub will die.
There is no guarantee that this particular mother or the cub will survive. But there was something hopeful in the cub’s chubbiness and in the fact that the mother shambled off, almost instantly disappearing into the tundra.
She wasn’t so desperate that she crunched the bones or continued tearing what little had been left behind by others on the carcass.