WWF

WWF International Arctic Programme polar bear specialist, Geoff York, is currently in the Chukchi Sea area with the US Fisheries and Wildlife service, conducting research into the status of polar bear populations in the area. This is the first of several blogs from him during his time there …

Today Ann had her first unscheduled dip in the Arctic Ocean. With the amount of thin ice that the Explorer Team have been crossing over the past few days it was inevitable that one of them was going to get wet sooner or later. Since Ann is the lightest of the three she normally takes the lead when crossing thin ice but that also means she is constantly in the ‘Guinea Pig’ role. She managed to avoid total immersion but an arm and leg went through the ice into the water below. Ann was able to get herself to some firmer ice and once there simply had a roll around in the snow to help absorb any excess moisture.

To call the last 14 days eventful for the Catlin Arctic Survey Explorer Team would be the grossest sort of understatement. Two weeks of both the weird and wonderful culminated in a rude awakening on Thursday morning when the ice pan on which they were camped started to break up.

Brownie, a 5 year old husky cross, can boast to be the dog who’s on top of the world. Well, furthest north at any rate. She’s on polar bear alert guarding the scientists and support team of the Catlin Arctic Survey way out on the floating sea ice of the Arctic ocean.

It’s no picnic surviving on an arctic expedition in the depths of winter and early spring. But if you are doing a scientific survey at the same time, it is a lot more challenging. For the explorers in the Catlin Arctic Survey team trekking across the floating sea ice of the Arctic ocean, a picnic cool box is a vital piece of kit.

Based on first year sea ice approximately 1.5 m thick and about 10 km from the rugged coastline of Isachsen on Ellef Rignes Island the location of the Catlin Arctic Survey 2010 Ice Base site is stunning. It’s quite surreal here, like being on a different planet and it’s not as flat as you might think. The ice we’re camped on is flat but to the north and south of camp there are regions of multi-year ice which have ridged up over time and created a bizarre but beautiful rubbled ice landscape.

Early on Wednesday 3rd March I headed to Aberdeen Airport to begin my journey to the sea ice of Deer Bay off the coast of Isachsen, Ellef Rignes Island, Canada. I was finally on my way to carry out some novel and exciting fieldwork attempting to answer questions on the topic of ocean acidification.

In early February, WWF and the US Fish and Wildlife Service partnered to facilitate community-based meetings between village conservation leaders from Chukotka, Russia and Alaskan communities along the Chukchi Sea coast. Although the people who live across the Chukchi Sea from each other are relatively close in miles, our Chukchi partners had to travel around the world to reach the other side and meet their neighbors for the first time. For WWF, this was also an opportunity to highlight the work of the Chukchi Umky Patrol Program we support in Russia, a grassroots effort to minimise negative polar bear human interactions. The Umky program has in addition cultivated efforts to eliminate poaching and manage a relatively new problem: walrus hauling out near villages in huge numbers.

The Arctic Tent comes down today, on the same day that President Obama comes to town to join other world leaders in the negotiations. As our last act yesterday in bringing voices of the north to the negotiations, we finished with a flourish. The tent was packed to capacity to hear indigenous people from North America and Europe talk about the impact of change on caribou and reindeer.

So you’re sitting in front of your computer reading this and wondering “so it looks fine from here, but how many people are really paying attention to what is going on?”