LOCALadk Magazine

LOCALadk 30 tovik, and we had access to the only rentable one in town — an old mini school bus with accordion doors and seating for 8-10 passengers. Polar bears find their customary food – seals – on and under the pack ice that once covered the Arctic seas more than nine months of the year. But climate change has led to the loss of sea ice habitat, with a re- duction in the extent and duration of ice. In mid-sum- mer when the Arctic pack ice retreats, bears remain marooned on land where they find little food to sus- tain them. They have keyed into the presence of whale carcasses on Barter Island that result from the annual whale hunt in September and October. The bears typically arrive in late August and will scavenge on the remains of the previous and current year's hunts until the sea ice returns later in the fall. It is no accident that we visited in early September. Temperatures were mild, mostly in the 40s and 50s, and it remained dry aside from occasional showers in Kaktovik. We spent most of our three days in Kaktovik with the polar bears, some of the most amazing days of my lifetime in nature. Four episodes stand out in my memory. One time, we witnessed what seemed like play behavior as a polar bear using its paws seemed to be playing for many minutes with a small, smooth log in the water. Was this simply "fun," or was it practice in handling slippery seals in the water? We always found many polar bears at the whale carcasses and we happily watched them for hours. We observed little interaction between the bears, which kept respectful distances from each other, but one day the 6-7 bears present suddenly rose up on alert, looked to the east, then ran off to the west. We won- dered what might cause their fear and sudden bolting. Several minutes later the answer appeared from the west as a grizzly trotted up to the carcasses. Despite the grizzly bears' smaller size, they dominate. Apparently, such interactions and outcomes are not uncommon at bone piles on the Beaufort Sea coast- line. In a study published in 2015, scientists observed 137 encounters between the two bear species at bone piles. The polar bears almost always reacted submissively, even though the grizzlies did not act overtly aggressive. In half of the encounters, grizzlies, sometimes only half the size of polar bears, displaced the polar bears completely. (As a side note: in inter- specific interactions between gray and red foxes and between southern and northern flying squirrels, the smaller species also wins out. A matter of attitude?!) One evening we watched a mother with two cubs cautiously approach the bone pile from the water. When a large male polar bear strode between her and the bone pile, she stopped. Adult male polar bears will kill cubs, perhaps for food or perhaps to bring the mother back into estrus, and she did not come any closer to the pile. Our most epic encounter occurred that evening as we watched many polar bears mingle around the bone pile. During our three days photographing these white giants, the polar bears never showed any obvious reaction to our presence, even when we stood outside the minibus. But this evening a bear approached our vehicle, and we retreated quickly inside and shut the door. The bear circled to the back of the bus, stood on its hind feet, and punched the rear window, causing it to fracture! The bear then left the not-fully-broken window, walked around to the door at the front side of the minibus, again stood on hind feet, and this time pounded on the accordion door. Our startled bus driv- er quickly put both his feet on the inside of the door to hold it closed. I don't know what the bear intended, but I suspect it sought other food and not to make a meal of us. After it failed to get in, it moved over to a nearby ambulance and assailed it, only to fail again. (One might well wonder why an ambulance was parked at the polar bear laden carcass dump, but I suspect the driver also sat watching the bears, not awaiting a tour- ist casualty.) Polar bears, especially young or undernourished ones, may hunt people, although this is rare. Accord- ing to a Wildlife Society Bulletin report, there were only 73 confirmed polar bear attacks on humans between 1870 and 2014, resulting in 20 deaths and 63 injuries. Recently, a worker at a remote radar site in Nunavut was killed by two polar bears. We retraced our steps the final four days of our trip, spending nights in Prudhoe Bay and Wiseman and maximizing wildlife viewing and photographic oppor- tunities during the days. The oil drilling and processing facilities at Prudhoe Bay, the gold mining artifacts around Wiseman, and the ever-present pipeline along the highway provided a stark contrast to the pristine, scenic wilderness through which we had traveled. Tourist travel to Kaktovik to see polar bears was cur- tailed the last few years due to Covid, but I hope it will resume some year soon so I can take my wife to revel in the richness of wild Alaska. t

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