From April 11 to 21, 2014, join a Norwegian Polar Institute and WWF-Canon scientific expedition to collect critical data about Europe’s most westerly polar bear population. The population on and around the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is facing a future without summer sea ice. See all posts from the expedition here.
April 21, 2014

Today, we will wrap up the ship based portion of NPI’s spring polar bear survey effort. The seas have calmed into gently rolling swells by breakfast and mostly clear skies allow views of the southwestern shores of Spitsbergen and its namesake pointed mountains rising abruptly from the dark ocean. Northern fulmars continue to be our constant companions, soaring around the ship and her rigging. The captain estimates a 3 PM arrival into Longyearbyen where the ship and crew will refuel, restock, and prepare for their next research cruise scheduled for departure tomorrow night.
Jon, Magnus, and the helicopter crew will finish out the final two weeks of survey work flying from Longyearbyen, basing for several days at a research cabin on Barentsøya, and using fuel caches strategically placed around the island to extend their range. Weather limited our last few days of flying and survey work, especially in the northeast, so they still have a number of collars to deploy. I’ll also be interested to hear the final count of family groups observed, both mums with cubs from this year and yearling cubs from last year as an important indicator of reproductive success.
Monitoring wildlife takes time, financial investment, and effort to develop meaningful data sets over periods long enough to detect trends. Monitoring polar bears is further complicated by their remote and broad distribution across historically frozen seas in a part of the world that is largely inaccessible for many months of the year. The cost of setting up, running, and maintaining field camps is much higher and more logistically complicated than similar work elsewhere. The windows of time that polar bears are more easily accessible are also fairly short and much of our traditional work (observations, aerial survey, and aerial based capture) is highly weather dependent. Even with the best support and planning, there are few guarantees this far north.
Data gathered on this trip and in the coming year via satellite collars, geo-location ear tags, and TDR tags (Temperature and Depth Recorder) will add considerably to our collective understanding of polar bears in the Barents Sea, their use of habitat, and their response to change. To turn this data into information however requires long term monitoring, not just a single season. Even when conditions in the Arctic were more stable, there were always good and bad years for polar bears. The challenge is to separate the short term variation, what we would consider natural background fluctuations, from significant long term trends. Even more challenging but critical is to combine this with the best available projections on climate and sea ice to try and predict future responses of polar bears to expected loss of sea ice habitat.

From April 11 to 21, 2014, join a Norwegian Polar Institute and WWF-Canon scientific expedition to collect critical data about Europe’s most westerly polar bear population. The population on and around the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is facing a future without summer sea ice. See all posts from the expedition here.
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From April 11 to 21, 2014, join a Norwegian Polar Institute and WWF-Canon scientific expedition to collect critical data about Europe’s most westerly polar bear population. The population on and around the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is facing a future without summer sea ice. See all posts from the expedition here.

April 16, 2014
For the first time this trip, I was wide awake late in the evening. The ship was sailing back above 80 degrees north latitude and heading into the fringe of this winters pack ice- things could get interesting. Large ice bergs calved from glaciers on the north side of Nordaustlandet Island in previous years stood out on the horizon and the ships radar, surrounded by young sea ice only frozen in the last few weeks. Ice formation was quite late in the Barents Sea this winter and remained well below average in final extent. All of the areas we’d been sailing through should have been solid ice and were just a few years back. This year, Svalbard was ice free on all sides until the very end of the winter.
The low angle ‘evening’ light is absolutely perfect to illuminate the contrasting dark open water and floes of drift and young consolidated ice dotted occasionally with deep blue blocks of ancient glacial ice. While the sun never truly sets, it does dip down just to the horizon, teasing us with a nightfall that will not return here for many months. The Lance glides into this surreal sea and ice scape with little effort- this young ice, while starting to look more like solid first year ice, is still relatively soft and thin. Good enough for seals and walrus to haul out on and for polar bears to walk on, but not good breeding habitat for ringed seals as the ice formed too late, is very flat (no relief or pressure ridges to collect snow), and there is only a skim of light snow.
While we often hear about the plight of the polar bear in popular news and media, we rarely hear about the effects a rapidly warming Arctic is having on their primary prey, the ringed seal. Due to both the rapidly changing conditions and to long term research and monitoring of seals in the area by NPI, Svalbard may be the best place in the world to begin understanding the potential impacts of climate change for this important species. Along with being the primary food for polar bears across the Arctic, it is also one of the top three foods consumed by coastal dwelling Arctic peoples and is a nutritional powerhouse without easy replacement.
Over breakfast discussions with our colleagues at NPI we learn that research here on ringed seals is starting to show disturbing trends. Lack of sea ice in many places coupled with conditions like those surrounding us here (thin flat ice with inadequate snow) are leading to reproductive failure of ringed seals in some years and locations. Newborn pups rely on well-placed lairs (snow caves on top of the ice, adjacent to pressure ridges or ice blocks, and with a breathing hole for access to the sea) to protect them from hungry predators like polar bears, Arctic Fox, and even gulls. Without that protection, they are easy prey. While that is good news for some bears in the short term, it will lead to long term difficulties as ringed seal populations ultimately decline in abundance and potentially shift in distribution. I also wonder about potential changes in what is called synchrony- polar bears have evolved to take advantage of ringed seal pupping during a specific time window each spring. Den emergence and seasonal migrations are tied to this window of food abundance. What will happen if that window closes or shifts significantly in time?
The capture team will start the day looking at the Seven Islands in the Nordenskioldbukta before turning their efforts to the main island. We’ll continue to push East with the Lance- as far as the sea ice will allow us to go in this vessel. The weather forecast is showing high winds, snow, and poor visibility for all of Svalbard tomorrow, so the helicopter crew is anxious to make the most of the time they have today. We spy a few more ivory gulls (when I say we, I mean our resident expert from Sweden Tom Arnbom- a serious birder!) as we push further into the ice, the odd bearded seal, and solitary walrus are becoming more common. We’ve still seen very few ringed seals, but hope that will change as we progress today.

From April 11 to 21, 2014, join a Norwegian Polar Institute and WWF-Canon scientific expedition to collect critical data about Europe’s most westerly polar bear population. The population on and around the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is facing a future without summer sea ice. See all posts from the expedition here.
After a successful morning of capture work yesterday, two adult males and one adult female, we decide to head back west. The Lance had pushed into the first year ice pack about 100 meters in lieu of anchoring. Now she proceeds to break free from the ice that has refrozen again around us. A combination of forward and reverse motion with specially designed air jets along the side help break up the young ice just enough for us to turn the ship and head back out into the open sea.
The ship will motor overnight up Hinlopenstretet and then down Wijdefjorden. Our goal is to get close enough to Longyearbyen that the research team from NPI can fly directly across the mountains and retrieve a new shipment of satellite collars that was delayed from the manufacturer. On their return they will look for a female that was collared last year and has a maternal den near the head of the fjord.
As we sail north, the weather turns south quickly. Sun, blue skies, and fairly flat seas are replaced by swirling clouds, snow blowing horizontally, and churning seas that soon start to break over the ship’s bow. With a tall, 3 story structure, the Lance leans from the wind like a vessel under sail, pitching and rolling as she slowly makes her way into the squall. We turn south into Wijdefjorden just before bed time and find much smoother sailing overnight.
The view in the morning has changed for the better and the ship sits quietly next to an area of new ice. We are surrounded by steep, snow covered mountains in a fairly narrow fjord- the longest on Svalbard. A few early risers were rewarded with a glimpse of a polar bear walking along the far eastern shore- the first we have seen from the ship- fantastic!
Once the capture crew heads off for the day, we will spend some time processing a sample of snow to test a potentially useful new genetic technique- obtaining viable DNA from polar bear footprints. This is a pilot effort we are trying in Norway and in the US to determine the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method. It’s a collaboration with a French genetics lab that has shown this is possible with other species. If successful in the testing phase, this technique could be used in the more remote parts of the Arctic where we lack basic information or the capacity for monitoring. It would also be an excellent tool for community based efforts as sample collection and preservation is very straightforward. I would love to try a similar technique for collection of genetic material from polar bear dens in the coming years.

From April 11 to 21, 2014, join a Norwegian Polar Institute and WWF-Canon scientific expedition to collect critical data about Europe’s most westerly polar bear population. The population on and around the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is facing a future without summer sea ice. See all posts from the expedition here.
Pitch and roll, pitch and roll as we settled into our bunks last night. Just enough seas to make things interesting. A thud on the hull at 5 AM followed by a familiar hiss and occasional shudder stirs me to wake. The boat motion is now perfectly still and it takes a minute to discern if we are still moving. Outside the port hole, the churning seas are now solid white- we are in the ice. While not a heavy ice breaker, the Lance is capable of cruising through shore fast and most first year ice.
When I come up to the bridge, we are almost at 80 degrees latitude approaching the north western tip of Spitsbergen and passing by the old Dutch whaling station of Smeerenburg. Those on our team that are new to the Arctic are already on deck with cameras and binoculars taking stock of this fascinating new sea and icescape. Our videographer Rhineout is all smiles as he jumps from spot to spot looking for unique viewpoints, oblivious to the -17 C temperatures. The bow of the ship is also a frozen ice-scape as spray from our evening cruise in rough seas is frozen on the rigging and anything metallic on deck.
We’ll spend much of the day maneuvering into Woodfjiorden where NPI has a collared female polar bear they hope to recapture. The weather shifts from localized dense fog patches to clear blue skies. Sea bird sightings are common and include guillemots, little auks, fulmars, and even two ivory gulls. Walrus are seen early-morning and we pass closely by five bearded seals mid-day before arriving in the fjord and launching the first helicopter survey.
Polar bear research on the cutting edge

As a polar bear field biologist, this is a great opportunity for me to talk with my colleagues at NPI, Jon Aars and Magnus Anderson, to compare notes and share experiences. Unfortunately, due to schedules and distance, this is altogether too rare amongst our colleagues globally. Each region we work in is unique in some aspects of both general ecology and bear behavior. In Svalbard polar bears share the marine world with the usual suspects- walrus, ringed and bearded seals, along with beluga and the rare bowhead whale, but they also have species here that are new to me- harp and hooded seals, narwhal and fin whale to name a few. NPI also have their own uniquely laid out capture kits and systems of working on bears to collect samples once sedated. This year they are testing an exciting new dart delivery system that, if successful, will be much less invasive than current equipment.
The team at NPI is also pioneering work in the use of geo-location ear tags that store a surprising amount of data on a chip set the size of a small coin- including temperature. These smart tags can provide coarse location data, but the temperature and light information may be able to identify denning events. New technology, improved capture tools, and advances in the drugs available for wildlife capture will continue to advance our understanding of this sentinel species and how it is responding to rapid changes in the Arctic environment.
Changes we are already seeing in real time as both the fjords around Longyearbyen and the one we sit in now should be covered in first year, shore fast ice- but both are completely ice free. Jon has worked here now for 11 years and has never seen so little ice. This not only complicates his research (he cannot safely land on the young ice still available in some areas), it also complicates life for the bears, especially females emerging from maternal dens and looking to hunt on the ice for much needed calories.
Our colleagues also remind us that it’s not just the ice that is missing, parts of Svalbard are receiving less snowfall, and this is starting to impact the primary food of the polar bear- ringed seals. Researchers in eastern Spitsbergen are estimating near complete failure of ringed seal recruitment (survival of newborns to adulthood) in some areas and years due to lack of snow cover for their normally protective snow lairs. This may be an indicator of changes to come as other parts of the Arctic warm, and it is not good news for polar bears.

 
From April 11 to 21, 2014, join a Norwegian Polar Institute and WWF-Canon scientific expedition to collect critical data about Europe’s most westerly polar bear population. The population on and around the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is facing a future without summer sea ice. See all posts from the expedition here.
I remember when I visited Svalbard for the first time, it was more than 20 years ago during summer, we had a hard time with the ship going up the west coast of Svalbard due to sea ice. Today, the sea on the west coast of Svalbard does not even freeze in winter, despite temperatures far below minus 30 degrees Celsius.
Before, it was possible to cross fiords and bays with skidoos close to the settlement Longyearbyen. Today you have to drive along the shore with the skidoo and what before took ten minutes takes hours, due to lack of sea ice.

These dramatic changes in sea ice distribution are close to Hopen Island. This was the best denning area for the polar bears. It was here that polar bears came ashore in late autumn when the sea ice froze to dig a den in the snow. During the last few years, the freezing of the winter sea ice has been more and more delayed and fewer polar bears managed to get ashore, while the ice edge was too far away.
The ones which did land on Hopen ran into a huge problem when they came out of the den with their cubs. This is the time of the year when ringed seal pups  – the main diet for polar bears – are found on the ice. So, when the mothers and her cubs came out of the den they encountered an open sea and were literally stranded. The sea ice was already gone and with it the ringed seal pups.
Magnus is a polar bear scientist who works for the Norwegian Polar Institute and has twenty years experience in the area. Magnus says he has never seen anything like this year. Even fiords and large bays in northern Svalbard have not frozen and where there is ice, it is so thin that the researchers can not work there without the risk of breaking through the ice.
To get to the thicker sea ice we have to head to northeastern Svalbard – above 80 degrees North, far above the Arctic Circle. Here we hope to find fast sea ice and hopefully lots of polar bears. This area was in fact out of bound not long ago due to heavy sea ice conditions in the summer time. Now we are going there in winter. The world is not as it used to be, and the sea ice melt goes incredibly fast.
It is sometimes hard to notice gradual changes, but here in Svalbard, the change is dramatic. The rich ecosystems that have evolved around sea ice might disappear, not too long into the future.