WWF - Polar bear field notes

Update on the Svalbard polar bears, September 2012

2012-09-21

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WWF Polar Bear Tracker

ID: N23989
Tagging date: 08.04.2012
Location: Wijdefjorden, pos: 79.5354N, 15.2337E
Age: 6 years
Length: 214 cm
Weight: 163 kg
Cubs: no cubs

This summer the waters surrounding Svalbard have been completely ice free. A fair number of bears have therefore been on land throughout the summer months, but they have not only been sitting still on land to conserve energy, several have also wandered long distances in search for food. N23989 is one of the bears that have been quite active this summer, and she has walked along the shores of northern Spitsbergen. Some weeks ago she walked north along the Wijdefjorden (the longest fjord in Svalbard) towards the north. She followed the coast into another large fjord in the north, the Woodfjorden. We have seen this summer movement behavior before, where bears walk long distances along the shoreline, often patrolling a certain stretch of coastline the entire summer. It seem that this search for food is a useful strategy, because dead marine mammals often wash up on shore and these represent a very good food source for the bears, once they find it.

ID: N26098
Tagging date: 24.04.2012
Location: Blåbukta, pos: 77.935N, 23.592E
Age: 11 years
Length: 217 cm
Weight: 220 kg
Cubs: no cubs

During the summer the collar on N26098 stopped working, and we have heard nothing from her since the end of July. We had hoped that her collar would transmit for longer than it did, but we also know that it is not uncommon that these delicate electronics fail after the strain put on them by polar bears. The fact that polar bears may spend as much time swimming as walking on land, their close association with sea ice and their strength all can explain why collars often fail. We expect a certain loss of collars but work continuously to reduce it through improved designs. N26098, however, does not care what has happened to her collar, she most probably is still on land on the southern shores of Edgeøya, where we last heard from the collar before it went silent.

ID: N26018
Tagging date: 20.04.2012
Location: Agardhbukta, pos: 78.058N, 18.928E
Age: 22 years
Length: 215 cm
Weight: 217 kg

Cubs: female yearling (N26052)
Polar bears in Svalbard seem to spend their time in summer walking along the shores in the search for something to eat. Sometimes they get lucky and they find more food than they can eat. After a long journey along Wijdefjorden, N26018 and her cub finally crossed the glaciers over to Isfjorden in midsummer. We could follow her track on our computers and wandered where she was heading, what would she do next, when her track suddenly stopped. We could tell that she was moving, but only within a few hundred meters. She seemed to walk some distance away from a point that she continuously returned to. She had obviously found something of great interest, and she intended to stay there for a long time. We then got reports that a dead whale had washed up on shore in the area, and the position fitted very well with our positions on N26018. We visited the place with our helicopter, as part of our autumn field work, and could confirm that the female and her cub both was in very good shape and that they had still had lots of food left. They will meet the winter in good condition, which is especially good news for the one and a half year old cub.

ID: N7753
Tagging date: 20.04.2012
Location: Palanderbukta, pos: 79.533N, 21.149E
Age: 23 years
Length: 201 cm
Weight: 174 kg
Cubs: male yearling (N26071)

We have had a relatively high number of satellite collar failures this spring and summer, more than usual. The collars we have used are of a new type and they give fantastic detailed and accurate data when they work properly, but on the other hand we seem to have a problem with short collar lifetimes. We will improve this in the future, but right now we there is nothing we can do about the problem. The collar on N7753 has failed transmitting GPS-positions, but we still get a position of lower accuracy determined by another method (calculated by the satellites themselves). The last good positions we got from the collar was from the southern part of Hinlopen. Now, however, it seems that the female (and her cub) have moved north to the drifting sea ice far north of Svalbard. This information is associated with some uncertainty, given the problems with the collar, but if they are real the female has moved north and must have swum a long distance to reach the ice. We have documented this kind of behavior before, so it is absolutely possible. We hope to get more data from the collar that can confirm that this is what she actually has done.

Update on the Svalbard bears

2012-06-26

7753

N7753 and her cub have done some interesting things this spring. They set out on a trip along the longest glacier front in Svalbard, but must at some point have regretted the choice of route, because they turned around and walked back the same way they came. Then they moved out on the little ice that was present in the area and managed to move over to the island south in the Hinlopen Strait. After being on land for some time, they went out on the ice again and started to move south east. When looking at ice maps this area has almost no ice at the moment, but still the little family manages to stay quite far off shore. Bears seem to require very little ice to be able to move and presumably hunt if they have no other choice. It is however far from ideal and it must cost quite a bit of energy to stay in such a dynamic environment, where everything is moving and melting around them. Sea ice in this area is about to disappear altogether, so sooner or later these bears will have to go on to land.

N23989

During the last weeks this female has really explored the northers shores of Spitsbergen. During late winter she remained in the inner part of Wijdefjorden where some ice formed late in the season. Ice conditions has generally been very bad this winter, but where the ice formed bears had good hunting conditions with lots of ringed seals hauled out on the ice. After the ice melted this spring N23989 started wandering along the shore lines of the northern fjords. At one point she swam across the mouth of the Wijdefjorden and continued into the Wood and Liefdefjorden area. This area has some very active glaciers and it is common to see ringed and bearded seal hauled out on the glacier icebergs floating in the fjords. This creates opportunities for bears to hunt seals even when the sea ice is gone for the season.

N26098

N26098 spent a long period of time on the only ice that still remained in the region, in the area between Barentsøya and Kong Karls Land, before that ice slowly started disappearing too. At one point the positions we got from the collar formed an unexpected and strange pattern. The collar moved in a circular pattern to the south west, and we became suspicious that something was wrong. The collar seemed to follow the path of the ice drift, with the circles being the effect of tidal currents. We believe that the bear has lost the collar on the ice and for some time recorded its drift path. It is of course unfortunate if we are right and that the collar actually has fallen off, but it happens sometimes, and it is nothing we can do about it. Polar bear are extremely hard on the equipment we give them and even the best designed collars sometimes break and fall off.

N26018

Some bears just surprise us with their travelling. N26018 has been captured several years in the same area and we were pretty sure that she would stay there in summer as well. Then she and her cub crossed land over to the inner parts of Isfjorden on the west coast of Spitsbergen and then suddenly they decided to head for the pack ice north of Svalbard, presumably because there are seals on the ice there that they can hunt. They set forth on a long journey straight north, walking on land and swimming to get to the northernmost islands of the Svalbard archipelago, called Sjuøyane. We have seen bears use this route before and it is the best way to reach the drifting pack ice of the north at a time when ice is melting further south in the archipelago. It is however risky, because how can they know that there still is ice to walk on further north? They cannot know how the conditions are this year, but maybe their experience says it usually is possible to reach the ice? We will follow their journey and see if they manage to reach the ice.

Last day in the field

2012-04-30

Today was our last day in the field this spring. We flew in Isfjorden, the fjord where Longyearbyen, the main settlement, is located.

There are not that many bears here, most bears are found in the eastern and northern part of Svalbard, Isfjorden is on the western side and dominated by a warm sea current from south, making the fjords ice free much of the year. Thus, it was not that a big surprise that it took us about two hours to locate bears.

On the northern side of the fjord, we found in total nine places where ringed seal cubs or adults had been killed by bears, and all by one family of a mother and two two-year old females! They were in really good shape, the cubs heavier than an average adult female. This was a really clear indication that the high densities of seals in some areas with sea ice covering much less area than in most years could improve hunting efficiency a lot. It mirrors what we have seen this season, with adults a bit above average condition, and cubs of the year much heavier than in normal years. Ringed seals on the other hand must have had a very hard year in many areas.

All together, we ended on 81 polar bears handled this year, a bit better than an average year.

Follow Svalbard polar bears at the WWF Polar Bear Tracker.

By Jon Aars, Norwegian Polar Institute

Field camp on Barentsøya

2012-04-18

After two weeks on RV Lance, we left the ship and established the field camp we have on the island Barentsøya, central in the Svalbard archipelago.

We arrived yesterday, captured two bears (a female and a male pair) a few km from the cabins in the afternoon, and got the two small cabins heated and got a trip wire set around the camp to warn about polar bears getting close. Trip wires make noise and a flare when a bear step into it, and is maybe the most important protection we have.

We wake up 6 am this morning when a bear triggered it. It turned out it had been able to get inside first without warning us, maybe because wind had accumulated snow one place so the wire was almost at ground level. The bear had chewed on the helicopter float on one side, and punctuated it. Not good news if we have to land on open water. Fortunately it had not done anything to the rotor blades.

Weather has been really nice today, and we worked all day. In the morning we marked another female-male pair close to the camp, both of them really old animals, in their mid twenties (for polar bears, that is about how old they get). After noon we located an adult female that got a satellite collar, also close to the camp. Further northeast we encountered a subadult female bear, likely a three year old. In the evening, in a nice evening sunlight, we captured a male with known age of seven.

One difference from working on a boat where you get dinner when back from the field is that in the camp we have to prepare food ourselves. Also, we have to spin blood samples to separate plasma and blood cells. However, you always feel good after such days when you have been able to handle some bears and have got samples for different important data analyses. The blood samples tell us about pollution levels and general health of the bears.

Follow these bears at the WWF Polar Bear Tracker.

By Jon Aars, Norwegian Polar Institute

Reindeer remainder

2012-04-11

We woke up to a nice morning, and flew the whole stretches in and out of Wijdefjorden, a very long fjord in Spitsbergen, about 100km from south to north.

There was hardly any sea ice there, and the bears thus obviously had found out they wanted to be somewhere else. We managed to locate one adult male, though. One of the locals in the fjord, marked there in 2002, 20 years old.

We also found a reindeer carcass with bear tracks around. Many reindeer die in winter, but it is also known from Svalbard that bears successfully kill reindeer on rare occasions. If this one was killed, or a bear had simply found it after it had starved to death, we could not say.

We spotted one female bear with a large painted number on its bum. When we capture a bear, we paint a number on the pelts, thus we are able to avoid drugging it again later in spring. The number disappears in summer, when the guard hairs are shed and replaced. The bear we spotted was an adult female we handled three days ago. She had moved from the neighbour fjord to the west. Resighting bears does provide some useful data about movement for bears we have not equipped with telemetry collars. We put collars on about 10-20 females every year.

After noon, weather became worse, and we sailed out of Wijdefjorden and into Liefdefjorden to the west.

Follow Svalbard bears at the WWF Polar Bear Tracker.

By Jon Aars, Norwegian Polar Institute