Polar Bear Diet Expansion with Climate Change

Nature is adaptable. If given time it can adjust, find new niches and new opportunities for survival. While rare, reports are coming in of Polar Bears eating Caribou, Lemmings and Ravens. As the polar ice melts, new species are becoming available as a food source. Harbor Seals are moving in to occupy the shores of Hudson Bay. Polar Bears are finding new sources of food and are being less finicky in what they eat... it's a good thing... right?

Not so much.

I have always assumed that Polar Bears are strict carnivores. All of the documents say that their main food source is the Ringed Seal. It made sense that they are opportunistic and will take advantage of any meal they can find but it didn't occur to me that they would only eat certain parts of the seal. In speaking with the naturalists and scientists associated with Polar Bears International (PBI), I learned that Polar Bears are lipovores.

The Ringed Seal (Pusa hispida) utilizes a thick layer of blubber to keep it warm on the ice floes of the arctic. This fat layer is what the Polar Bear needs to build body mass for it's summer long fast. In most cases, the bear will not eat the meat! I thought they would eat every morsel, taking advantage of every opportunity. I was shocked but suddenly it made sense as to why the arctic fox would follow the bear onto the ice. Why hunt for your own food when all you need to do is wait for someone else to capture it for you?

As it turns out, Polar Bears, in addition to calories, obtain much of their water from the fat of the Ringed Seal. If the bear begins to eat protein they need to take in a higher amount of water from outside sources. Have you ever tried to get a cup of water from snow? Ten inches of fresh snow can contain as little as 0.10 inches of water! It takes 1 calorie to warm 1cc of water 1 degree centigrade. Since temperatures can get as low as -68 C... well... after a lot of math you can see it takes quite a bit of effort to get very little reward.

All of this is leading to more energy expenditure to receive a far smaller amount of benefit and in some cases, a negative benefit or at best no benefit at all. The Harbor Seal (Phoca vitulina) births on shore, not the ice so they have a thinner fat layer than the Ringed Seal. Have you ever seen a Lemming? Not much bigger than the hamster you had as a kid. And Caribou is exceptionally lean meat, great protein but not much water.

Moral of the story? It takes time to adapt, change is happening too quickly, we need to slow it down as much as we can to give these animals a fighting chance. Get involved.

Polar Bear Infanticide

A warning upfront: Some of the images included in this post are graphic and very upsetting but it's a story that needs to be told.

By now we all know about Global Climate Change or Global Warming. We know that the sea ice is melting. We know that these changes are happening rapidly and we know that it is putting more and more pressure on the animals that rely on the ice for their survival. However, KNOWING and SEEING FIRST HAND are two very different things.

Churchill is a perfect location to view Polar Bears in the wild. Five rivers pour into Hudson Bay near Churchill, the fresh water freezing at a warmer temperature than the salt water with which it mixes. The polar bears stage in the area, waiting for the ice to form so that they can break their summer long fast by hunting the ring seals which inhabit the ice flows. The large males arrive in the first wave. They spend their time sparing with other males, establishing dominance and working muscles that have been neglected during the summers inactivity. When the ice forms they leave and it is safe for the smaller, younger males and females to stage on the shore before they step off onto the ice flow. The final wave of bears to arrive on the sea ice are the females with cubs. They are vigilant about keeping their cubs a safe distance from large males who are feeling increasingly pressured to find food for their starving bodies.

Historically the bears have been able to return to the sea ice to begin hunting by November 8th. Within the past decade that date has moved further out, the sea ice forming later and later and the multi-year sea ice all but disappearing. On November 19th I was witness to an incident which speaks to the pressures these bear are facing. The ice has yet to form. The area is saturated with bears: large males, thin geriatric bears, slender females, rambunctious teenagers and moms with cubs. They are all starving and they are impatient for the ice to form. A young female was guarding her cub when a large male approached too close. She valiantly fought him, attempting to protect her cub but in the end he was too big, too strong and he took the cub.

This is not an isolated incident. It has been recorded a confirmed four times to date during this season with an additional four unconfirmed incidents - eight in total. Retired biologist, Dr. Ian Sterling has been working with the Western Hudson Bay population of Polar Bears for over 30 years and has reported that he has not witnessed an incident of cannibalism in his time.

It would be easy to hate the male bear, to call him a bad seed and dismiss the incident as the harshness of Mother Nature. In speaking with JoAnne Simerson, Senior Keeper and Polar Bear Behaviorist with the San Diego Zoo, we agree that one has to have compassion for the male bear as well as the cub and female. If his normal food source were available to him he would not have wasted his time on the cub. The world is changing quickly and they all have so little time to adapt....

This December the United Nations plans to meet in Copenhagen to discuss a plan to reduce the world's carbon footprint. I was very happy to learn that President Obama will be attending the meeting and has pledged to reduce U.S. emissions 17% from 2005 by 2020.

For more information and resent press releases surrounding this incident and the ongoing research into Polar Bears please visit Polar Bears International (PBI).

15 Days in the Arctic

Hitting the road to Churchill, Manitoba, Canada for 15 days packed full of polar bears, arctic fox and arctic hare. Hoping for some good sunsets this year... wish me luck! I'll report back in 15 days.

Exhausted and Elated

Enrique and I had the distinct pleasure of working with two very talented couples in a dance studio in Oakland last night. While I am absolutely exhausted (we wrapped at 1:50 AM, packed up and headed home and I was on my way to Elkhorn Slough to photograph otters by 6AM) I am thrilled with the results of the shoot. They have a show coming up in January and needed promotional images, we captured those and then some!

Eric and Chelsea (top) are American Grand Ballroom Smooth Champions and Max and Rachel (bottom) are an up and coming Latin dance couple. I don't

even pretend that I can dance

but I know what it's supposed to look like and these guys have it in spades. And I'm not just saying that because Chelsea is my cousin! They are truly talented. I'll keep you posted on the show when I get more information in case anyone is in town and wants to get tickets.

Desert Stars

On a recent trip to Death Valley I had the opportunity to set my camera up outside my tent without fear of it being stolen in the night. Over the course of the night my camera recorded 545 individual 20 second exposures of the night sky. While I wasn't awake to wish on it, the camera was able to capture a Shooting Star as well as a multitude of airplanes and satellites. The sky is pretty busy up there!

I pointed my camera toward where I thought the equatorial plane may be based on my knowledge of the location of the North Star. As I processed the image and added layer upon layer I was delighted to see the final trails emerging. What I had not anticipated was the variation in color of the trails... As a photographer I should know... light is not always the same. Yet somehow, as I look up into the sky at night, all I see are white and occasionally red stars. The trails tell a different story! They are alive with whites, blues, gold, pink and even teal! I can't wait to get back out there and experiment more!

Fantastic News!

I was thrilled to find an email hidden in my Spam Folder which reads...

Congratulations! This email is to officially inform you that you have been chosen as a Highly Honored Photographer in the 2009 Nature's Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International Awards and will be featured in this year's Fall/Winter edition of Nature's Best Photography!

‘Recycle Me!’
Sand Island, Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
Rebecca R Jackrel
San Francisco, CA, USA
www.RebeccaJackrel.com

Laysan Albatross shadows skim across a beach on Midway Atoll where the message ‘Recycle Me!’ has been spelled out in the sand with marine debris collected on the island.

Trash from around the world is collected in the ocean currents and dropped off on the shores of islands like Midway. Even more is caught up in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre where Laysan and Black-footed Albatross mistake the plastic for food, bringing approximately 5,000 pounds each breeding cycle back to feed their hungry chicks. We can help stop this ‘garbage patch’ from growing by reducing waste and recycling more.

From Inspiration to Personal View

We all look to others for inspiration especially as photographers and artists. I scroll through Flickr, books, magazines and numerous forums in my scouting for new locations, angles I haven't seen before and times of year to visit.

The Mobius Arch in Alabama Hills has become so well known that a path has been erected to keep people from completely trampling the fragile desert environment.... they still trample it. In 2006 my friend Jim Goldstein visited the arch and captured an image that I love for it's light, color and one simple little cloud. (Click here to see it.) But he in turn was inspired to seek out the location by Galen Rowell's 2001 image 'Arch beneath Mount Whitney in the Alabama Hills'.

I in turn have been inspired to visit the location and try my own hand. I think we all start with the "classic shot'. The need to reproduce the image that drew us to the area in the first place. Some people stop there with the thought 'I got what I came for! Look! It's just like {insert famous photograph's name here}'s picture!' That may be fine for most but for some of us we need more. Once that first image is made we become hungry... we visit the area again and again. We crawl on our hands and knees, we stretch and crane our necks, we hike further and we fall, skid and slid until suddenly we see it. Something we think we haven't seen before... trouble is... once we've captured that... we start all over again! I can't wait to see what I get next time I visit! Until then, Thank you to all the wonderful photographers out there who provide me with inspiration every day!