{"id":546990,"date":"2026-03-19T15:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T15:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/546990\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T15:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T15:20:10","slug":"seals-risk-polar-bear-encounters-for-diverse-diets-amid-climate-change-ubc-study-reveals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/546990\/","title":{"rendered":"Seals Risk Polar Bear Encounters for Diverse Diets Amid Climate Change, UBC Study Reveals"},"content":{"rendered":"

As climate change reshapes Arctic food webs, ringed seals will swim into risky polar bear territory if the menu is varied enough, a new study published in\u00a0<\/a>Ecology Letters<\/a> has found.<\/p>\n

Researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC), York University, the Department of Oceans and Fisheries, and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry tracked 26 ringed seals and 39 polar bears in eastern Hudson Bay, using GPS and dive information to analyse how the animals found, and avoided\u00a0becoming,\u00a0food.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change is reshaping the Arctic, an area often seen as a foreshadowing of climate changes around the world,\u201d said lead author Katie Florko, who conducted the research as a doctoral student at UBC\u2019s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries (IOF). \u201cIt\u2019s not just melting sea ice: climate change is affecting everything: the predators, the prey and their habitats, effectively reshuffling a complex, intertwined system. If we map critical habitat while ignoring how bears and seals interact, we risk potentially protecting areas that animals are actually avoiding in a climate-changed future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCommunities across the North rely on healthy seal and fish populations, so more accurate maps of these populations also help support food security and wildlife management,\u201d said senior author Marie Auger-M\u00e9th\u00e9, UBC professor in the department of statistics and IOF.<\/p>\n

A mix of food outweighs fear\u00a0<\/p>\n

Florko\u2019s team combined GPS data with daily sea-ice maps and yearly models of the mix of fish species available in Hudson Bay, following where seals and bears went, how seals moved and dived, and what the fish buffet looked like beneath them. Feeding these data into ecological models, they identified how the seals reacted to the bears\u2019 presence, or their \u2018landscape of fear\u2019.<\/p>\n

They found something surprising: while seals avoided spots where bears were very active\u2014moving through them quickly\u2014they rolled the dice and dived for longer when the fish mix was especially varied. This was true even in bear hotspots. In safer places, however, greater fish variety meant shorter dives, likely because food was easy to get.<\/p>\n

The researchers theorise this could be due to the \u2018portfolio effect\u2019. Just as investors have many different investments to reduce overall risk, animals select varied food sources to increase their chances of finding something to eat in ever-changing ocean conditions. \u201cThe seals aren\u2019t putting all their fish in one basket,\u201d said Florko.<\/p>\n

She located the bears from the air by helicopter, waiting for a ranger to shoot a tranquilising dart, before landing to clip the GPS collars on. \u201cThey smelled like a big wet dog.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listening for paws on the ice\u00a0<\/p>\n

The research also suggests that ringed seals may have tactics for identifying high-traffic polar bear areas. Florko looked into whether seals might listen for bears walking on the ice while the animals are underwater, delaying their return to the surface if they detect danger. \u201cWe didn\u2019t end up finding a relationship, but that may be because it\u2019s a fine-scale event occurring in a matter of seconds that we weren\u2019t able to capture\u2014yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

These tactics could also inform how seals respond to other predators gaining better access as sea ice melts, including killer whales. If seals are attuned to polar bears\u2019 footsteps on the ice, the same tactics might not work as well with killer whales. \u201cI think potentially, killer whales could be a harder predator to avoid because one of the ways seals escape polar bears is they\u2019re generally better swimmers. But killer whales are excellent swimmers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team also noted that as the sea ice shrinks, relative bear density on the remaining ice could spike, raising short term risk for seals even before long term bear numbers continue to decline. For planners, the message is simple: build habitat models that include both sides of the equation\u2014food and fear\u2014so protections match how animals actually live. \u201cThis is about giving managers the most accurate picture possible,\u201d said Florko. \u201cWhen we factor in predators and prey together, we make smarter decisions for wildlife and for the people who depend on them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As climate change reshapes Arctic food webs, ringed seals will swim into risky polar bear territory if the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,2998,213092,16174,213091,66,213090,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-546990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-food","11":"tag-food-variety","12":"tag-polar-bears","13":"tag-ringed-seals","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-warming-arctic","16":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546990","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=546990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}