As our boat bobs in a windy, iceberg-filled cove, I try to gauge the skinniness of the polar bear in front of me. It isn’t plump, but I’ve certainly seen bears in worse health.
We’re in Franz Josef Land, a remote part of Russia that sits between the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Many biologists consider this 192-island archipelago one of the least damaged polar ecosystems we have left. There are high numbers of polar bears, walruses, and seabirds at this time of year – late summer – and plenty of glacial ice. Unlike the permanent sea ice a few hundred miles to the north, this ice calves off from glaciers as they shrink and grow in annual cycles, creating floating sculptures that our boat manoeuvres around to get a better look at the bear.
Even the coastal polar bears here seem to be doing okay. While offshore bears follow the sea ice, hunting seals on ice floes all year round, coastal bears spend their summers on land, and are forced to forage whatever they can find. Relying on sporadic, low-calorie meals such as the eggs of nesting guillemots or skuas, it’s usually harder for these bears to pack on the pounds.
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These slimmer bears may appear less healthy than their offshore cousins, but in fact it might be the other way round. Researchers recently discovered that offshore bears around the Barents Sea are . This is a direct consequence of their size, and the seals that let them bulk up.
Pollutants in the food chain
Every summer, melting ice releases a variety of toxic pollutants that degrade only extremely slowly at the frozen poles. These include perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), which are used industrially to make a number of products including carpeting and metal plating.
As chemicals like these slowly come out of the ice, they enter the food chain, making their way into the fatty deposits that keep seals warm and let offshore bears get big. Over a period of 14 years, studying 152 bears living around Franz Josef Land and the nearby Norwegian archipelago Svalbard, the team found that offshore female bears were in a better condition than coastal females, but on average their levels of PFASs are 33 per cent higher.
These and other organic chemical pollutants likely come from factories in China, Russia, Poland and India. These emissions find their way to the Arctic via air currents and accumulate in the ice until they are released during each summer’s annual melt.
The biggest challenge is to figure out what these chemicals do the health of the offshore bears, says Heli Routti, of the Norwegian Polar Institute, who worked on the study. “Polar bear bodies are extremely complex,” she says. A contaminated bear isn’t necessarily unhealthy.
Yet in East Greenland has linked organic chemical exposure to brain damage in bears, and even breakages of the baculum – the penis bone.
Arctic exploitation
During my 15 days in Franz Josef Land, I saw 5 bears, all coastal, and all looked relatively healthy. There are signs that some bears in the region are so far coping with global warming-induced ice loss relatively well. “The bears in Svalbard, so far, seem to be handling the sea ice loss,” says Andrew Derocher, of the University of Alberta, Canada, who worked with Routti on the study. “But I’d bet that’s going to change given the extreme rate of ice loss in the area.”
The threat from pollution is likely to grow too. Franz Josef Land is part of the Russian Arctic National Park, and is currently protected from oil, gas, and mineral exploitation. But Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the melting arctic as an economic opportunity. He visited Franz Josef Land last year – ostensibly to monitor cleanup of old Soviet military bases – but after his trip he claimed the region could be worth $30 trillion in minerals.
Exploitation across the arctic looks set to rise. Canadian firms already make millions from mining inside the arctic circle, and includes bankrolling Greenlandic mining, in an effort to coax the island towards independence. Russia claims parts of Greenland’s sovereign territory, and multiple nations are stepping up their military activity in the region in a situation the US Coast Guard has likened to the land grabs going on in the South China Sea.
No one knows how these tensions will play out, but this rush to stake claim to the melting arctic means one certainty for the bears and their home: yet more change – and that’s the biggest threat of all for wilderness ecosystems this fragile.
