Geoff York, the WWF Global Arctic Programme’s resident polar bear expert, is in the field in the Chukchi Sea, Alaska, working with bears for the 14th year in a row. Read his previous posts here and here.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Finally – a banner morning: clear, nearly calm, and should reach +5F by this afternoon. The team was joined by a second small helicopter late last night that will act as a spotter and may also haul extra fuel later in the season when the sea ice become too broken for the fixed wing to land. We meet at 8 AM for our briefing and plan to launch around half past ten. We will also have our fixed wing spotter/fuel plane today, so pilot coordination will be important.
Following the high winds this week, we are expecting that any old tracks will be well drifted, which should help us. However, snow scour (loss of snow) and hard pack will make new tracks harder to find. Good thing we will have a few more eyes on the ice today.

Polar bear tracks on hard-packed snow are difficult to see from the air and even more difficult to follow any distance.

By Geoff York
Fourteen years. It’s difficult to believe that this will be my fourteenth consecutive year conducting polar bear captures in Alaska. From my first fall capture season in 1998, I always assume that each season and year will be my last such opportunity. Why? Because so few people have the opportunity to work out on the frozen seas, and fewer yet with an animal as magnificent as the polar bear. It is both an opportunity and a real honour and one I do not take for granted- every flight, every day, every year.
Thursday, March 31
Today I am flying north from Anchorage to a field camp just north of Kotzebue along the shorelines of the Chukchi Sea. I’ll be joining the US Fish and Wildlife Service Chukchi research team led by Dr Eric Regehr and Dr Karyn Rode. They have been at the field station for two weeks and have captured 29 bears – mostly family groups and young single animals, but all in good condition.
This will be their 4th year of research in the Chukchi Sea, an area where we have significant need for more information on the shared polar bear population with Russia. The data gathered through this project will shed significant light on the current status of these bears and inform future management decisions. It will also expand our understanding of how polar bears in different geographic areas are responding to rapid changes in sea ice. Additional research will be required on the Russian side in coming years to complete this story, and both WWF and the USFWS are working with partners in Russia and Chukotka to fill that knowledge and capacity gap. Continue reading →

By Geoff York
As will likely be a common scene from here on out, I awake to a snowy, foggy morning. As the sea ice starts to break up, more and more water opens up and that significantly adds moisture to the near shore environment. With the right temperature and dew point combination, fog doesn’t move in, it just happens.
The weather improves enough to fly, though our fueling airplane is stuck in Kotzebue due to local weather conditions down there. We gear up and head out to the southwest in the direction of the village of Shishmaref, though we will remain far offshore. You may have heard of this town as it became famous during recent discussions on the impacts of climate warming to people in the north.
Continue reading →