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eNCA
21 hours ago
- Science
- eNCA
The eye-opening science of close encounters with polar bears
LONGYEARBYEN - It's a pretty risky business trying to take a blood sample from a polar bear -- one of the most dangerous predators on the planet -- on an Arctic ice floe. First, you have to find it and then shoot it with a sedative dart from a helicopter before a vet dares approach on foot to put a GPS collar around its neck. Then the blood has to be taken and a delicate incision made into a layer of fat before it wakes. All this with a wind chill of up to minus 30C. For the last four decades experts from the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) have been keeping tabs on the health and movement of polar bears in the Svalbard archipelago, halfway between Norway and the North Pole. Like the rest of the Arctic, global warming has been happening there three to four times faster than elsewhere. AFP | Olivier MORIN But this year the eight scientists working from the Norwegian icebreaker Kronprins Haakon are experimenting with new methods to monitor the world's largest land carnivore, including for the first time tracking the PFAS "forever chemicals" from the other ends of the Earth that finish up in their bodies. An AFP photographer joined them on this year's eye-opening expedition. - Delicate surgery on the ice - With one foot on the helicopter's landing skid, vet Rolf Arne Olberg put his rifle to his shoulder as a polar bear ran as the aircraft approached. Hit by the dart, the animal slumped gently on its side into a snowdrift, with Olberg checking with his binoculars to make sure he had hit a muscle. If not, the bear could wake prematurely. "We fly in quickly," Oldberg said, and "try to minimise the time we come in close to the bear... so we chase it as little as possible." After a five- to 10-minute wait to make sure it is asleep, the team of scientists land and work quickly and precisely. AFP | Olivier MORIN They place a GPS collar around the bear's neck and replace the battery if the animal already has one. Only females are tracked with the collars because male polar bears -- who can grow to 2.6 metres -- have necks thicker than their heads, and would shake the collar straight off. Olberg then made a precise cut in the bear's skin to insert a heart monitor between a layer of fat and the flesh. "It allows us to record the bear's body temperature and heart rate all year," NPI researcher Marie-Anne Blanchet told AFP, "to see the energy the female bears (wearing the GPS) need to use up as their environment changes." The first five were fitted last year, which means that for the first time experts can cross-reference their data to find out when and how far the bears have to walk and swim to reach their hunting grounds and how long they rest in their lairs. The vet also takes a biopsy of a sliver of fat that allows researchers to test how the animal might stand up to stress and "forever chemicals", the main pollutants found in their bodies. AFP | Olivier MORIN "The idea is to best represent what bears experience in the wild but in a laboratory," said Belgian toxicologist Laura Pirard, who is testing the biopsy method on the mammals. - Eating seaweed - It has already shown that the diet of Svalbard's 300 or so bears is changing as the polar ice retreats. The first is that they are eating less seals and more food from the land, said Jon Aars, the lead scientist of the NPI's polar bear programme. "They still hunt seals, but they also take eggs and reindeer -- they even eat (sea)grass and things like that, even though it provides them with no energy." But seals remain their essential food source, he said. "Even if they only have three months to hunt, they can obtain about 70 percent of what they need for the entire year during that period. That's probably why we see they are doing okay and are in good condition" despite the huge melting of the ice. AFP | Olivier MORIN But if warming reduces their seal hunting further, "perhaps they will struggle", he warned. "There are notable changes in their behaviour... but they are doing better than we feared. However, there is a limit, and the future may not be as bright." "The bears have another advantage," said Blanchet, "they live for a long time, learning from experience all their life. That gives a certain capacity to adapt." - Success of anti-pollution laws - Another encouraging discovery has been the tentative sign of a fall in pollution levels. With some "bears that we have recaptured sometimes six or eight times over the years, we have observed a decrease in pollutant levels," said Finnish ecotoxicologist Heli Routti, who has been working on the programme for 15 years. "This reflects the success of regulations over the past decades." AFP | Olivier MORIN NPI's experts contribute to the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) whose conclusions play a role in framing regulations or bans on pollutants. "The concentration of many pollutants that have been regulated decreased over the past 40 years in Arctic waters," Routti said. "But the variety of pollutants has increased. We are now observing more types of chemical substances" in the bears' blood and fatty tissues. These nearly indestructible PFAS or "forever chemicals" used in countless products like cosmetics and nonstick pans accumulate in the air, soil, water and food. Experts warn that they ultimately end up in the human body, particularly in the blood and tissues of the kidney or liver, raising concerns over toxic effects and links to cancer.
eNCA
23-06-2025
- Science
- eNCA
In Norway's Arctic, meteorologists have a first-row seat to climate change
In the cold of the Norwegian Arctic, meteorologist Trond Robertsen manually recorded precipitation levels for over two decades, witnessing firsthand the effects of climate change. At 66, Robertsen retired after enduring spartan conditions during missions that totalled eight years on two islands of the Svalbard archipelago: Bjornoya (Bear Island) and Hogen. To reach the remote Bjornoya, where the only humans are the nine employees of the small weather station, the meteorologists have to fly in by helicopter as they are rotated on a six-month basis. "The idea is to not stay too long, because it's a different rhythm, and you are isolated," Robertsen told AFP. It is demanding work. "It's a 24/7 occupation," he said. "We are doing it all day, all night." The team worked shifts to cover all hours of the day, he explained. AFP | Olivier MORIN Weather observation starts in the early morning at 6:00 am. "It's manually done, then you have to go outside and check the bucket that is collecting precipitation," said Robertsen. "During wintertime you have to melt the snow and ice into water" to determine how much has fallen. The data is then transmitted the Norwegian Meteorological Institute in Tromso and Oslo. "This tiny little observation is actually quite crucial for the weather forecasting systems up north, because observations are so sparse from that area." Bjornoya sits in the middle of fishing grounds, and the weather reports published twice a day are closely followed by the fishing boats in the area. - Less ice, fewer bears - Since his first missions to the Arctic in the 1990s, Robertsen has witnessed the changing climate. "When I started going up north, there was a lot of ice. In the later years, it's less ice and fewer polar bears. You can see the climate change," he said. Polar bears have been classified as a vulnerable population since 1982 on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species, with the loss of Arctic sea ice the most pressing threat against the species. However, their precise numbers, are almost impossible to assess. AFP | Olivier MORIN In winter, employees of station always venture out in pairs and have to be armed due to the presence of polar bears, but according to Robertsen it's rarer to encounter them today. In April, during his last mission to the island, Robertsen had an accident while doing carpentry: he slipped and ended up cutting one finger clean off and half of another. Due to tough weather conditions, he had to wait some 26 hours before being evacuated by helicopter and transported to a hospital. "It was a heavy snowstorm coming in, only the day after the helicopter came," he recounted. Looking back, Robertsen does not regret the years spent under the austere living conditions. "The Arctic has given me so many experiences and memories so it is a small fee to pay back with my left little finger and part of my ring finger," he said. By Olivier Morin With Johanna Wastfelt In Stockholm
Japan Today
24-05-2025
- Science
- Japan Today
Polar bear biopsies to shed light on Arctic pollutants
By Olivier MORIN and Etienne FONTAINE With one foot braced on the helicopter's landing skid, a veterinarian lifted his air rifle, took aim and fired a tranquilizer dart at a polar bear. The predator bolted but soon slumped into the snowdrifts, its broad frame motionless beneath the Arctic sky. The dramatic pursuit formed part of a pioneering research mission in Norway's Svalbard archipelago, where scientists, for the first time, took fat tissue biopsies from polar bears to study the impact of pollutants on their health. The expedition came at a time when the Arctic region was warming at four times the global average, putting mounting pressure on the iconic predators as their sea-ice habitat shrank. "The idea is to show as accurately as possible how the bears live in the wild -- but in a lab," Laura Pirard, a Belgian toxicologist, told AFP. "To do this, we take their (fatty) tissue, cut it in very thin slices and expose it to the stresses they face, in other words pollutants and stress hormones," said Pirard, who developed the method. Moments after the bear collapsed, the chopper circled back and landed. Researchers spilled out, boots crunching on the snow. One knelt by the bear's flank, cutting thin strips of fatty tissue. Another drew blood. Each sample was sealed and labelled before the bear was fitted with a satellite collar. Scientists said that while the study monitors all the bears, only females were tracked with GPS collars as their necks are smaller than their heads -- unlike males, who cannot keep a collar on for more than a few minutes. For the scientists aboard the Norwegian Polar Institute's research vessel Kronprins Haakon, these fleeting encounters were the culmination of months of planning and decades of Arctic fieldwork. In a makeshift lab on the icebreaker, samples remained usable for several days, subjected to controlled doses of pollutants and hormones before being frozen for further analysis back on land. Each tissue fragment gave Pirard and her colleagues insight into the health of an animal that spent much of its life on sea ice. Analysis of the fat samples showed that the main pollutants present were per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) -- synthetic chemicals used in industry and consumer goods that linger in the environment for decades. Despite years of exposure, Svalbard's polar bears showed no signs of emaciation or ill health, according to the team. The local population has remained stable or even increased slightly, unlike parts of Canada, where the Western Hudson Bay group declined by 27 percent between 2016 and 2021, from 842 to 618 bears, according to a government aerial survey. Other populations in the Canadian Arctic, including the Southern Beaufort Sea, have also shown long-term declines linked to reduced prey access and longer ice-free seasons. Scientists estimate there are around 300 polar bears in the Svalbard archipelago and roughly 2,000 in the broader region stretching from the North Pole to the Barents Sea. The team found no direct link between sea ice loss and higher concentrations of pollutants in Svalbard's bears. Instead, differences in pollutant levels came down to the bears' diet. Two types of bears -- sedentary and pelagic -- feed on different prey, leading to different chemicals building up in their bodies. With reduced sea ice, the bears' diets have already started shifting, researchers said. These behavioral adaptations appeared to help maintain the population's health. "They still hunt seals but they also take reindeer (and) eggs. They even eat grass (seaweed), even though that has no energy for them," Jon Aars, the head of the Svalbard polar bear program, told AFP. "If they have very little sea ice, they necessarily need to be on land," he said, adding that they spend "much more time on land than they used to... 20 or 30 years ago". This season alone, Aars and his team of marine toxicologists and spatial behavior experts captured 53 bears, fitted 17 satellite collars, and tracked 10 mothers with cubs or yearlings. "We had a good season," Aars said. The team's innovations go beyond biopsies. Last year, they attached small "health log" cylinders to five females, recording their pulse and temperature. Combined with GPS data, the devices offer a detailed record of how the bears roam, how they rest and what they endure. Polar bears were once hunted freely across Svalbard but since an international protection agreement in 1976, the population here has slowly recovered. The team's findings may help explain how the bears' world is changing, and at an alarming rate. As the light faded and the icebreaker's engines hummed against the vast silence, the team packed away their tools, leaving the Arctic wilderness to its inhabitants. © 2025 AFP
