WWF Arctic's latest posts

This is the last day Natalia and I will be flying with the team before we head back to Anchorage, so we are happy to see blue skies in the morning. After breakfast, we prep for the day and pack up the helicopters.

We see track after track all morning, but all of them appear to be old. We flew northwest today, in search of larger male bears. They have definitely been spending a lot of time here, but we have yet to sight a bear.

In early April, WWF’s Bering and Arctic Sea program officer, Elisabeth Kruger, traveled to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service field office in the Arctic to assist with interpretation for our Moscow colleague, Natalia Illarionova.

In these blog posts, Elisabeth describes her experiences on the Arctic slope and the work that the FWS does to help us understand the Chukchi Sea polar bear population.

It’s exciting to be here in the Catlin Ice Base at the seasonal change from winter to spring. Warmer temperatures make living on the sea ice much more pleasant, and the plankton world is feeling the coming of spring too, writes Dr Victoria Hill.

Dr Oliver Wurl is part of the Catlin Arctic Survey team for 2011. He is researching the impact of ocean acidification on the “forests of the oceans” — phytoplankton (a form of algae), and explains his experiments in this video …

If you want to understand how ocean acidification might impact some marine creatures you need to do two things. First go to the seaside and find a seashell. Then go to a shop and buy a fizzy drink, any brand will do. Put the seashell in the fizzy drink and leave it for a few days. You will see that it is starts to dissolve away.

When you think of arctic wildlife, threatened ecosystems and climate change, the first thing that springs to mind for many people are polar bears. While polar bears are beautiful creatures, copepods are the stars of Dr Ceri Lewis’s research and for good reason: changes in their numbers could have drastic knock-on effects on the health of the marine ecosystem.

Dr Helen Findlay, of Plymouth Marine Laboratory, describes the hard work that went into creating the largest sampling hole yet, and how the ice base scientists use these access points to the sea below.

“Today we drilled another hole in the sea ice through to the seawater below. It’s an impressive 1.8 metres long by 1 metre wide, and the sea ice we had to drill through was about 1.7 metres thick. This ice hole is a special one because it is going to be used for running experiments rather than just routine sampling of the seawater.

The storm that ‘drifted’ over us on Sunday didn’t really show its full strength until later on in the week. Winds increased to about 20 knots, gusting 30 knots at times, with snow being blown across the ground it reminded me of being a kid walking across a beach on a stormy autumn day with sand blowing all around me. It doesn’t take long for the winds to transform the snow, and drifts quickly formed around all our tents.

After 77 miles in temperatures dipping as low as -42°C, the polar explorers have completed the first phase of their expedition: a speedy 11-day crossing of Prince Gustaf Adolf Sea. Arriving at the Catlin Ice Base at 7:45pm on Wednesday 23 March, the weary team were welcomed with warming cups of tea and a hearty meal from Ice Base Chef Fran Orio.

Peter Ewins and Rhys Gerholdt of WWF Canada are with an ABC News crew from New York in Wapusk National Park, observing the world’s largest concentration of maternity dens for polar bears.

They shot this lovely footage of a polar bear cub, and another of a polar bear and her offspring, during the trip, showing how one mum and her cub behave as they emerge from a den, and a baby bear playing at the mouth of a den.