Dispatches from the field

Mikhail wakes up just after midnight. The crew has spotted our first polar bear, and it’s a family group!

My old boyhood dream is now reality – I’m on my way to the Laptev Sea.

It’s about 4 degrees C this morning, and wisps of fog are rising from the river.

Some delays have silver linings. A delay in our departure from Khatanga actually had a decidedly cooler lining- a trip to the local woolly mammoth museum housed in a permafrost cave underneath the town.

We’ve just landed in the Arctic in Khatanga, there’s a lovely sharpness in the arctic air.

We have now all gathered in Moscow and are on our the way to Krasnoyarsk, where we will change flights to the Arctic.

There’s an electric fence in WWF’s Ottawa office, and a motion detector’s siren blares at the first unlucky staffer to walk through the kitchen.

Jon Aars is a researcher with the Norwegian Polar Institute, Norway’s main institution for research, environmental monitoring and mapping of the polar regions. With the support of WWF, Aars studies polar bear populations on the Norwegian island of Svalbard. Read all of  his field notes from a Spring 2013 research expedition, and follow the bears […]

Jon Aars is a researcher with the Norwegian Polar Institute, Norway’s main institution for research, environmental monitoring and mapping of the polar regions. With the support of WWF, Aars studies polar bear populations on the Norwegian island of Svalbard. Read all of  his field notes from a Spring 2013 research expedition, and follow the bears […]

Jon Aars is a researcher with the Norwegian Polar Institute, Norway’s main institution for research, environmental monitoring and mapping of the polar regions. With the support of WWF, Aars studies polar bear populations on the Norwegian island of Svalbard. Read all of  his field notes from a Spring 2013 research expedition, and follow the bears […]