{"id":441385,"date":"2026-01-29T18:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T18:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/441385\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T18:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T18:42:11","slug":"no-sea-ice-no-problem-for-these-barents-sea-bears-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/441385\/","title":{"rendered":"No sea ice, no problem for these Barents Sea bears \u2014 for now"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lonely polar bear swimming for hours in an ice-free Arctic has been a poster child of a warming world affecting wildlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But north of Norway, the Barents Sea bears are doing alright \u2014 for now.<\/p>\n

Decades of melting sea ice and increasingly ice-free days in the region have not had the expected health impacts on this specific polar bear subpopulation, according to new research published in Scientific Reports<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bears are doing OK there,\u201d said co-author Andrew Derocher, biological sciences professor at the University of Alberta. \u201cThat might seem a bit counterintuitive \u2026 until you look at the ecosystem as a whole.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"ThreeThree polar bear cubs gather around their tranquilized mother. She had a litter of three cubs \u2014 an unusual brood size \u2014 and the smallest cub only weighed five kilograms. (Jon Aars\/Norwegian Polar Institute)<\/p>\n

The bears are seemingly adjusting to the lack of sea ice and still able to eat what they need to survive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a species so iconically tied to the change humans are causing to the climate, experts see a reminder of variation within populations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that there will be some winners in climate change. We hear a lot about the losers,\u201d said Marie Auger-M\u00e9th\u00e9, statistical ecologist with the University of British Columbia, who was not involved in the study. \u201cThere’s some animals that will take advantage of the conditions that are opening up for them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time, experts warn this adaptation may be temporary, and further loss of sea ice will still be devastating for polar bears.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AHard to weigh in the wild, a good proxy for determining polar bear population health involves live capture and measurement. (Jon Aars\/Norwegian Polar Institute)Hundreds of live captures<\/p>\n

The new research uses data from live captures of bears between 1995 and 2019 in the Svalbard archipelago, halfway between Norway and the North Pole, an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean and the Barents Sea.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This group, one of 20 recognized subpopulations of polar bears<\/a>, is made up of bears that stay on land during ice-free periods and bears that go roaming as far as Russia\u2019s Franz Josef Land.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In total, 770 bears were studied through capture-mark-and-recapture expeditions, which involve chasing these bears with helicopters.<\/p>\n

\"FromCapture-mark-recapture studies of Svalbard polar bears involve sedating them at a distance, allowing safe collection of samples and measurements. (Olivier Morin\/AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you fly around, you find the bear, you dart it, it goes down flat,\u201d Jon Aars, lead author and senior scientist at the Norwegian Polar Institute, told CBC News from Longyearbyen in Svalbard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Height, girth and other measurements are taken to get a sense of body condition, which Aars calls a simple proxy for how much fat is on the bear. This can help indicate a health concern before any population declines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt gives us a sense [if] there’s a problem,\u201d Auger-M\u00e9th\u00e9 explained, \u201cand then we can act at a time scale that’s relevant for conservation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As that data was gathered over decades, the effects of a warming Arctic were profound. After 2005, polar bears in the Svalbard area would have to deal with sea ice breaking up a month earlier than usual and have to navigate an additional hundred days, on average, of ice-free conditions. <\/p>\n

Yet despite an initial decline, their body conditions have rebounded and stabilized.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"SeenA mother and polar bear cub walk near the water near Churchill, Man., in December 2015. (Cameron MacIntosh\/CBC)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is surprising that they don’t lose weight or that they do so well despite that we know that they have much, much less time on the sea ice,\u201d said Aars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Diversifying the menu\u00a0<\/p>\n

Part of what experts think explains this lack of body condition decline is the consumption of prey that isn\u2019t normally part of the polar bear diet \u2014 and is potentially easier for them to access.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s the possibility that there might be unusually rich alternative foods to their standard ringed seal\/bearded seal diet in the area,\u201d suggested John Whiteman, chief research scientist with Polar Bears International, who was not involved in the research.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AA walrus rests on the shore of Borebukta Bay, located at the northwestern side of Isfjorden, in Svalbard Archipelago, northern Norway, on May 3, 2022. (Jonathan Nackstrand\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Aars and Derocher point to the availability of walruses, which have rebounded in population since being protected from hunting in 1952. Polar bears also eat bird eggs and whale carcasses.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually have been flying at the moment where you see a polar bear kill a reindeer,\u201d Aars said. Beyond that, the on-the-ground availability of these other prey species \u2014 which don\u2019t hang out on sea ice \u2014 mean polar bears don\u2019t need to expend as much energy travelling to hunt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

WATCH | A rare adoption in Churchill:\"\"<\/p>\n

Churchill polar bear adopts 2nd cub in wild<\/p>\n

In a rare occurrence, a polar bear in Churchill is taking care of her offspring and another cub that is not her own. Evan Richardson, a polar bear research scientist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, is studying the family.Climate change still a threat\u00a0<\/p>\n

Experts are cautiously optimistic about these particular polar bears but do not see that success translating across all populations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Canadian polar bears, this doesn’t change anything. Our bears are not doing well,\u201d Auger-M\u00e9th\u00e9 says, adding that extensive research has studied the bears in the western Hudson Bay.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s clear that their body condition, their survival, their reproduction has been declining with sea ice, and the same is true in the Beaufort Sea.\u201d <\/p>\n

They\u2019re all the same species but Whiteman sees the short-term future for polar bears differing from region to region. Ironically, he says, their long-term future is clearer, as the world warms from humanity\u2019s greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some point, you lose so much sea ice that you just lose the polar bears. And there isn’t a way around that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether these Barents Sea bears survive to the end of the century, says Derocher, is a wild card.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I’ve been surprised more than once studying polar bears over the last 40 years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lonely polar bear swimming for hours in an ice-free Arctic has been a poster child of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-441385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}