Authorities in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago have fined a person for doing something at sea that could have turned them into a meal if they had tried it on land. The person was fined 50,000 kroner, around $5,265, after they used a ship’s foghorn to rouse a sleeping polar bear spotted on shore in a remote fjord roughly 620 miles from the North Pole, the BBC reports. The blast woke the bear, “which moved to another location,” the governor’s office said. Authorities didn’t provide the name or nationality of the person. “The fine was accepted and paid,” the governor’s office said Thursday.
The governor’s office said other people in the ship reported the incident earlier this month, USA Today reports. Local rules state that “it is forbidden to needlessly disturb, attract or pursue a polar bear,” a protected species there since 1972. Wildlife protections in Svalbard are strict: all travel must avoid needless disruption to animals, from polar bears and walruses to whales and arctic foxes. In 2024, a tourist was fined around $900 for getting too close to a walrus on sea ice. Svalbard is home to around 250 polar bears and around 2,700 humans. Researchers say the bears are in surprisingly good shape despite shrinking sea ice.