LGSciencelab: The Bear Essentials

Decided to devote this post to a very hot topic here these days- polar bears!!
Seems there are daily sightings of these magnificent creatures in town! Reports say that there is a female with two teenage cubs, a 10 ft male, and several others seen in the last 2 days.

The night we arrived our driver pulled over onto the beach to show us the fresh bear tracks right along the main street, just as you turn into the NARL huts where we are staying. In our orientation that night we were given the "in the event of bears" talk. One thing stuck with me- Stephanie our UIC BARC Lab Manager Project Assistant told us among other things to "make yourself look really big"...duh, doomed already!

Can you make out the bear track- it's about 10-12" long!

Other bear tracks were found (and bears seen) near a local eatery. Here are some pictures of those tracks taken by Mary Ann Jalbert. Tish and I went out to try to see them but winds had blown snow around last night and we couldn't find them. What do you notice about the tracks? (and yes, these are real!)

One of the teachers we visited today told us that the story is that some whale meat was taken out of the permafrost ice box for the recent community festival. Then, it was left outside. Apparently the bears, who have a great sense of smell, were attracted to it, and have been cruising around that area in town regularly. But, why are they down here where we are on the outskirts of town???

Ross Lieb-Lappen, a member of Dr. Rachel Obbard's sea ice research team had a VERY close encounter with two bears last night as he was trying to photograph auroras. Seems he was outside last night trying to capture pictures of the auroras. He was laying down in the snow right next to his hut when he heard the crunching sound of footsteps. Since it was about 1am he figured it wasn't anyone he knew walking around. Then he sees two large bears walking around! He says he couldn't make it safely back into the hut so he jumped into the truck parked in front and blasted his horn. The bears just turned and walked away.
He was a very lucky young man!!

The hut they' re staying at is just a few down from where Tish and I are staying- too close for comfort! Needless to say WE aren't out looking for auroras, or anything else alone!

Here's a photo taken by another of Dr. Obbard's team, Ellyn Golden as they were out on the ice taking core samples.