Polar Bear, Radstock Bay, Lancaster Sound, Devon Island, Nunavut, Canada

August 28, 2023 - Day 6 of Quark's "Northwest Passage: East Coast Baffin Island to Lancaster Sound."

POLAR BEAR (Ursus maritimus)

"‘Nanuq" in Inuktitut, Polar Bears roam the floe edge, hunting for seals and other prey. Males can grow up to 10 feet in height, and weigh over 1,500 pounds.

Canada is home to about 16,000 polar bears, which is approximately two-thirds of the world’s total estimated population of 26,000 individuals. The global population is divided into 19 subpopulations, of which 13 are managed or co-managed by Canada.

Over 90% of the polar bears in Canada occur in two of Canada’s northernmost territories: Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

Polar bears are a circumpolar species that require sea ice for various life history events and feeding. Wherever there is sea ice, either seasonal or annual, polar bears can be found. Their distribution depends mainly on the distribution of seals and the productivity of the area they inhabit, but is also affected by sea ice movements.

There are several polar bear subpopulations that are forced ashore during the summer months, such as the bears of the Hudson Bay complex, and the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay areas. These bears come ashore whenever the sea ice retreats and melts – they conserve energy throughout the summer and remain in a lethargic state with a reduced metabolism.

In thick and closed sea ice it is hard for seals to maintain breathing holes; consequently, there will not be too many bears in the area. Seals, and the bears that prey upon them, are typically found near cracks or leads, floe edges, ice floes, polynyas, and consolidated chunks of ice and pressure ridges.

Polar bears are faced with various stressors: contamination, climatic changes, resource development and exploration, increased shipping through the Arctic, and harvest.

Almost all of these pollutants originate in the south, and are carried through water and air currents to the Arctic.

Polar bears are apex predators, and their contaminant load is determined by way of bioaccumulation and biomagnification. Contaminants are always a concern because people in Nunavut consume polar bear meat.

A higher frequency of ship traffic passing through the Northwest Passage can be expected with a decline of sea ice. Increased shipping traffic with ice-breakers can change ice floe size, which in turn can affect important feeding and breeding habitats of polar bears and seals.

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Northwest Passage: East Coast Baffin Island to Lancaster Sound

August 22, 2023 to August 29, 2023

For a trip report see the narrative included in the eBird Trip Report:
ebird.org/tripreport/154614

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Black-legged Kittiwake, East Coast of Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada

At sea
Map:
ebird.org/checklist/S148653671

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Polar Bear, Radstock Bay, Lancaster Sound, Devon Island, Nunavut, Canada

August 28, 2023 - Day 6 of Quark's "Northwest Passage: East Coast Baffin Island to Lancaster Sound."

POLAR BEAR (Ursus maritimus)

"‘Nanuq" in Inuktitut, Polar Bears roam the floe edge, hunting for seals and other prey. Males can grow up to 10 feet in height, and weigh over 1,500 pounds.

Canada is home to about 16,000 polar bears, which is approximately two-thirds of the world’s total estimated population of 26,000 individuals. The global population is divided into 19 subpopulations, of which 13 are managed or co-managed by Canada.

Over 90% of the polar bears in Canada occur in two of Canada’s northernmost territories: Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

Polar bears are a circumpolar species that require sea ice for various life history events and feeding. Wherever there is sea ice, either seasonal or annual, polar bears can be found. Their distribution depends mainly on the distribution of seals and the productivity of the area they inhabit, but is also affected by sea ice movements.

There are several polar bear subpopulations that are forced ashore during the summer months, such as the bears of the Hudson Bay complex, and the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay areas. These bears come ashore whenever the sea ice retreats and melts – they conserve energy throughout the summer and remain in a lethargic state with a reduced metabolism.

In thick and closed sea ice it is hard for seals to maintain breathing holes; consequently, there will not be too many bears in the area. Seals, and the bears that prey upon them, are typically found near cracks or leads, floe edges, ice floes, polynyas, and consolidated chunks of ice and pressure ridges.

Polar bears are faced with various stressors: contamination, climatic changes, resource development and exploration, increased shipping through the Arctic, and harvest.

Almost all of these pollutants originate in the south, and are carried through water and air currents to the Arctic.

Polar bears are apex predators, and their contaminant load is determined by way of bioaccumulation and biomagnification. Contaminants are always a concern because people in Nunavut consume polar bear meat.

A higher frequency of ship traffic passing through the Northwest Passage can be expected with a decline of sea ice. Increased shipping traffic with ice-breakers can change ice floe size, which in turn can affect important feeding and breeding habitats of polar bears and seals.

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Beechey Island, Wellington Channel, Nunavut, Canada

ALERT
This video includes images of the mummified human remains of three seamen, who had died on Beechey Island at the winter 1845/46 camp of the ill-fated Franklin Expedition. They were exhumed and examined in 1984 and 1986. The graphic images may be disturbing.

radiojamming.tumblr.com/post/612166196689780736/warning-i...

How is a body preserved so well in ice and permafrost? Just as a refrigerator or freezer slows or completely stops bacteria from causing decay in food items, permafrost and ice extends the same courtesy to anything buried in them. Of course, the conditions have to be specific! Other bodies found of the Expedition haven’t had even close to the same amount of preservation as the Beechey Island mummies. Wind, animals, and other natural processes have left a trail of skeletons rather than mummies. Clearly, something about depth of burial and level of protection is important as well.

Other ice mummies set to be covered include Ötzi the Iceman, and the Qilakitsoq mummies of Greenland. While there’s some variation as to their causes (glacial freezing and cold, dry air, respectively), the process is essentially the same. Cold stops bacteria! The deep freeze kept the Beechey Island mummies from complete and utter decay, like freezing beef in an ice cube. Granted, if the mummies were ever exposed to warmer-than-freezing air for a pronounced length of time, they would eventually decay.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechey_Island

Beechey Island

The first European visit to the island was in 1819, by Captain William Edward Parry. The island was named after the artist William Beechey (1753–1839) by his son Frederick William Beechey (1796–1856), who was then serving as Parry's lieutenant.

In 1845, the British explorer Sir John Franklin, commanding a new but ill-fated search for the Northwest Passage aboard HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, chose the protected harbor of Beechey Island for his first winter encampment. The site was not rediscovered until 1851, when British and United States search vessels anchored nearby.

In 1850, Edward Belcher used the island as a base. There are memorials to Franklin and other polar explorers and sailors on the island, including the French naval officer Joseph René Bellot, who died aged 27 falling into the Wellington Channel, northwest of Beechey Island.

In 1903, paying respect to Franklin, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen stopped at the island at the beginning of his successful voyage through the Northwest Passage.

In 1975, Beechey Island was declared a Territorial Historic Site by the government of the Northwest Territories. Since 1999, it has been part of the newly created Canadian territory of Nunavut.

In 1993, five archaeological sites on Beechey Island and nearby Devon Island (the Franklin wintering camp of 1845–46, Northumberland House, the Devon Island site at Cape Riley, two message cairns, and the HMS Breadalbane National Historic Site) were designated as the Beechey Island Sites National Historic Site of Canada.

Beechey Island is best known for containing three graves of Franklin expedition members, which were first discovered in 1850 by searchers for the lost Franklin expedition. The searchers found a large stone cairn, along with the graves of three of Franklin's crewmen – Petty Officer John Torrington, Royal Marine Private William Braine, and Able Seaman John Hartnell – but no written record nor indication of where Franklin planned to sail the next season.

In 1852, Commander Edward A. Inglefield arrived at Beechey, along with a physician Dr Peter Sutherland. John Hartnell's grave was opened, damaging his coffin, and Hartnell's memorial plaque on the coffin lid was removed. During a later expedition, a searcher named Thomas Morgan died aboard the vessel North Star on May 22, 1854, and was buried alongside the three original Franklin crew members.

In 1984 and 1986 Canadian forensic anthropologist Dr. Owen Beattie examined the three bodies and found them (externally) remarkably well-preserved. Autopsies determined that lung disease and lead poisoning were among the probable causes of death; the lead appeared to come from the thousands of lead-soldered tins of provisions with which the Franklin expedition had been supplied (although later studies would suggest that the unique water distillation system used by the ships was the major source of lead poisoning).

Later research, however, found through hair sample comparisons between the Beechey remains and those of expedition assistant surgeon and naturalist Harry Goodsir (who died on the expedition a year later, and would therefore be expected to have yet further exposure, under the lead poisoning hypothesis) that the lead in the three men's remains, while indeed present at high levels now recognized as deleterious, was no higher than Goodsir's, and thus evidently mostly the result of exposure prior to the expedition (due to high everyday lead exposure common in the 19th century), and consequently was unlikely to be solely responsible for their deaths.

In the 1990s, due to the deteriorating condition of the Beechey grave markers, all markers were replaced with bronze memorials.

www.adventurecanada.com/canadian-high-arctic-and-greenlan...

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