Snow!

I have a few more things to write about now that the rush of Thanksgiving is over. One of the things that happens in a culture is that, when something is really important to your culture,  you have lots of different words that help you identify very specific parts of something. Here in Fairfax, we don’t get a lot of snow, so we call frozen precipitation snow, ice  or hail. People who ski have more words and phrases for snow, such as “powder” or “packed powder” to describe the snow more specifically. If you live in a very snowy climate, you have lots of words for snow. Take a look at this Inuit list of words for snow.

Going Home

We leave for the Winnepeg airport in just a few minutes and will be home tonight. I will definitely return to Churchill someday. Being with a group was great but next time we’d like to explore on our own. We’re also thinking about returning to Churchill in July when the wildflowers and songbirds are spectacular and the beluga whales come in the hundreds to feed in the bay.

Please continue to post questions and, if you’d like us to come out and do a presentation on polar bears and artic ecology, just ask.

Karen & Tim

Polar Bear Jail

40 years ago, bears were a big problem in Churchill.  They were attracted to the town dump and would sometimes get into a house through a window.  Back then the solution to a problem bear was to shoot the bear.  The people of Churchill realized that they needed to find a way to learn to live with the bears so they worked with scientists and the Canadian Natural Resources department and made several decisions.  They created the Polar Bear Alert program.  They began to realize that Polar Bears could bring tourist money to the town. That money was especially needed after the military base closed.In 1980 they started the polar bear jail.  Now, when there’s a problem bear, the bear is captured and brought to the polar bear jail.  They have space for about 20 bears.  Once a bear is in polar bear jail one of two things happen.  If the jail isn’t full, the bears will stay in the jail until the ice pack freezes.  The bears are given water but no food, since that’s what they would get out in the wild while they wait for the ice to freeze.  One the ice this thoroughly frozen the bears are released straight on the ice.  If the bear jail gets too full, they air lift the bears by helicopter to a  spot about 50 kilometers north of Churchill where they will not be  a problem to people.  We watched them airlift a mother and her cub.Finally, in 2005, they closed the outdoor dump.  Bears were attracted to the food at the dump.  The town of Churchill now stores its trash in an abandoned military building.  That building is getting full very fast, however, and they don’t know what to do with the trash.  They don’t create enough trash to use a big incinerator and nobody else wants to handle their trash.  There is even talk of reopening the dump!Churchill is to be congratulated for working very hard to find a way for the bears and people to live together.  Finding ways for people and animals to share the earth is a problem everywhere and we all need to work together to find a solution.

Sparring

Polar Bears play-fight with each other. This is called sparring. Cubs spars, young adult males spar, and sometimes mother bears spar with cubs. Sparring helps them learn how to compete with other bears for food or mates. Usually the sparring starts when one bears either lowers his head or nudges or gently bits the other bear. Both bears then open their jaws wide and circle each other. Soon they look like wrestlers in a wrestling match. You almost expect to see a wrestling match judge looking to award points for the best moves. Sometimes they also stand on their hind legs to spar.

Amazing Ice

When we got to Churchill on Tuesday the Hudson Bay was not frozen at all.  By Thursday it was frozen almost a mile out.  The rapid freeze is caused by several things.  The freshwater Churchill river flows into the bay right there.  Freshwater freezes at a higher temperature than salt water so the river freezes before the bay, dumping large amounts of ice into the bay.  The current flow around the bay is counterclockwise.  At Churchill there’s a point of land sticking out into the bay.  The ice that freezes up further north moves with the current down to Point Churchill and then gets stuck in the land form.  These are the reasons that Churchill is the first place on Hudson Bay to freeze every year.  The bears know this and return to Churchill every year in October to be out on the ice as early as possible.

Polar Bears on the Ice.

Polar Bears live out on the ice from November until July when the ice breaks up. They are called marine mammals, just like a whale, because, even though they don’t live in the water, almost all of their food comes from an aquatic food chain. The large paws have two jobs. The front paws act like oars in the water and the back paws act like a rudder on a boat. They can swim at up to 6 miles per hour and can dive up to 15 feet. They actually don’t like to get wet because when their fur mats down it doesn’t keep them warm. The big paws also help them walk on the ice. The claws and the bumps on the bottoms of their paws keep them from slipping. Polar bears are also good at testing the ice with their paws to see if it’s frozen. The big paws spread their weight evenly over the ice and they can even crawl on their stomachs if the ice gets too thin.

Once out on the ice they hunt ringed seals. They hunt two different ways. Most of the time they sit by an opening in the ice and wait for a ringed seal to appear. This is called still-hunting. When a seal comes up for air they will either grab the seal with their jaws or kill it with a blow from their paw. They eat mostly the skin and fat and leave the meat for other animals. They can eat up to 100 pounds of seal blubber at one time.

Stalk-hunting usually happens in the spring when the seals sleep in the sun out on the ice. Polar bears will slowly move towards a seal as it sleeps and “freeze” when the seal wakes up to look for danger. When they are about 30 feet away, the polar bear makes one quick chase. If the seal can get back to its breathing hole in time, then it’s safe. Polar bears can’t catch seals once they are in the water.

Polar bears are very smart hunters and learn quickly. The Inuits even say that some polar bears have learned to lay down on the ice and hide their black noses with their paws so that they are less visible to the seals.

Baby polar bears are amazing

Polar bears mate out on the ice in spring each year. The pregnant females come ashore with the males each year in July. If they haven’t gained enough weight while they are out on the ice (about 300 kilos) the pregnancy ends in the fall without a birth. If they have gained enough weight during their time on the ice, the female polar bear builds an underground den in November and hides. They can go as much as 30 miles from the shore to find or build a den. They almost always go to the same denning areas each year. Wapusk National Park is a major denning area. The dens are either actually under the earth or in a snow bank. Cubs are typically born in January. Newborn polar bear cubs weigh less than 2 kilos when born and are pink with a very light, very thin fur coat. They are totally helpless. For the next few months they live in the den with mom and no one leaves the den during these very cold, very dark days of winter. The mother polar bear has nothing to eat or drink during this entire time (up to 6 months).

When the cubs weigh around 10 kilos, usually sometime in March, mom and cubs dig their way out of the den, spend a few days getting used to being outside (it’s still very cold) and begin the long march to the sea to get back out on the ice and eat before it breaks up again. Once they are on the ice, the typically eat young seals which are easy to catch.

Many polar bear births are twins and sometimes triplets. In recent years the number of twins and triplets has gone down. Scientists think this may be because they bears spending less time out on the ice and haven’t gained enough weight before they den up to have more than one cub.

Cubs stay with their moms for two to three years. Scientists have noticed that cubs seem to be staying with moms longer. They think the reason for this is that the cubs aren’t putting on enough weight in the first two years because they are not out on the ice long enough. This also means that, instead of having a cub every two years, a female polar bear now has a cub only every three years and she has fewer cubs at once time. All of these are reasons for the decrease in the polar bear population. The polar bear population in Churchill used to be over 1,000 and is now down to just over 900.

The cub in these pictures is probably an “11-monther”, one that will be two in March.

Northern Lights

Lots of questions about Northern Lights and my good friend, Mr. Sterling, has provided me with a web link to the Berkley Science Center that should have all your answers. The Alaska Aurora site and SpaceWeather should also help. As to whether the Aurora makes sound I asked almost a dozen people and gotten several different answers. Click here to read what the Churchill Northern Studies Centre has written on the subject. Your teacher may need to help you understand it, but basically it says that even the scientists can’t agree!

Friday

Today was another day out and about Churchill on our school bus. We saw 11 more bears, an arctic fox and another red fox.

The school bus is fun and frustrating. Fun because you are with friends and you get to see so many things, frustrating because when there’s something interesting to see you have to get the windows down and I know that you know how hard it can be to get school bus windows up and down! It’s even harder when the latches are frozen. We have to get the windows down in order to be able to see or take pictures. We also spend a lot of time scraping the ice off of the inside of the windows so we can see outside while we’re moving. (We almost always stop when we want to take pictures).

That brings me to today’s picture. I’ve given this bear a name, Gretchen, because she will always be special to me. Gretchen came quite close to the bus and the picture I’ve posted here was taken as she was right underneath my window on the bus. About 15 seconds after this picture was taken, Gretchen’s nose was UPAT THE WINDOW and I was standing almost nose to nose with a polar bear. We were about 2 feet apart and she looked so gentle and curious. My brain was saying “Don’t go any closer to her!” while my emotions were saying “She’s so cute, don’t you want to pet her?” It’s a good thing I listened to my brain because even though she’s cute she has great big teeth. In a few seconds she got down. It was a great experience but I don’t have a picture of her that close because she was so close that my camera wouldn’t focus.

We leave Churchill on Saturday evening and I may not get a chance to post again until Monday. I’m working on several different topics, however, including the aurora borealis. We saw a great aurora on Wednesday night.

Question Answers

Brooks:  We saw a snowy owl  on Thursday but no pictures to prove it and an arctic hare on Wednesday

John K:  You wanted to know about polar bear cubs.  The most a mom usually has is 3, more typical is 1.  Twins and triplets were more frequent than they are today.  Scientists think that this may be because the mom spends less time on the ice so doesn’t have enough stored up nutrition to support twins and triplets.

 Le Truang:  We finally saw the Northern Lights on Wednesday.  It was pretty spectacular.  Wide green bands going 180 degrees across the sky.

Arjun:  Polar bears can move pretty fast in the winter.  In the summer they overheat very quickly.  Scientists who are tracking them in the summer are very careful that the helicopter they are using doesn’t cause the bears to run for very long at all. 

Arjun:  Please know that absolutely no bears are harmed to get any of our pictures.  We take pictures with two different cameras, a Canon Rebel xt and  a Canon D40.  We also have two “long” lenses.  One extends to 400mm, the other to 500mm.  These long lenses make it seem that we were very close to the animals but we really aren’t.  It’s not safe to get close to wild animals.

Mrs. Phillips Class:

Polar bears probably ended up in the tundra after the last ice age.  Scientists think that they are a grizzly bear with special changes to help them survive (the white coat, the swimming paws).

I don’t usually like to name wild animals, because it usually makes people think that animals are like people and they aren’t.  When we treat wild animals as if they were people, then we have more problems.  There are a few polar bear who show up here in Churchill every year that some folks have named.  One is a female who’s often called Dancer and there’s a male, with lots of scars on his face, who some folks called scarface.

Even though I know I shouldn’t….I named on of the polar bears we saw today Gretchen.  See another posting for a picture of Gretchen.

Polar bears eat mostly ringed seals.  During the summer months they eat almost nothing, a little kelp and some lichen, but they wait until the ice freezes and they can hunt for their favorite food.

Polar bears can swim for more than 100 miles but they don’t spend most of their time in the water.  They spend most of their time on the ice, where they can catch food.  They catch the seals when they come up for air.  Even though a polar bear is a very good swimmer, it’s no match for a ringed seal once the seal starts swimming. Early in the “out on the ice” period, when polar bears are skinny, they don’t have enough fat to keep them warm for long times in the water.  Later in the year, when they have their full 4 inches (or more) of blubber, then they can stay in the water for longer times.