The Great White Bear (2 page)

I find it mildly astonishing in hindsight, but I had no comprehension at the time of just how unhealthy that bear clearly was. The fur on its nose was patchy and brown. By polar bear standards, it was painfully thin; as I look years later at footage we shot on that day, I can clearly see the bear shivering in the water, a function of having lost so much of its insulating body fat.

But I had at the time no frame of reference. The only other polar bear I had ever seen was a captive in the local zoo I sometimes visited as a child. Confined in an enclosure that provided neither the space nor the stimulation required by an intelligent, inquisitive mammal hard-wired to wander for vast distances across the pack ice, it paced continuously back and forth—two steps forward, a sideways shake of the head, two steps back—minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day. For the bear that had swum up to us that morning in the Beaufort Sea, its torment was not psychological like that captive but physical: unable to reach its favored habitat, the great predator of the Arctic was forced to struggle for scraps of food and, judging by its condition, was faring poorly in its quest. It seems in retrospect highly unlikely that it lived for very much longer after it drifted away from us.

Polarbjorn
is both a Norwegian word for "polar bear" and, appropriately, the original name given to the target of that particular bear's attention: a green-hulled, 150-foot-long icebreaker now called the
Arctic Sunrise.
Built in Norway in 1975, the ship's initial
raison d'être,
like that of its mammalian namesake, was to hunt seals: an ironic start to life for a vessel that was now used as a platform to document environmental damage and highlight the impacts of climate change. That change of vocation had taken effect in 1995; two years later, the
Sunrise
became the first ship to circumnavigate James Ross Island in the Antarctic Peninsula—a feat that had been impossible until warming temperatures led to the disintegration of part of the Larsen Ice Shelf, which had previously anchored the island to the Antarctic mainland. Shortly afterward, it traveled to the other end of the world, grinding through Arctic ice in the Beaufort Sea, which is where, one year later, we were gazing down on our unexpected visitor.

There was, however, one slight problem.

We were on an icebreaker, but there was very little ice. And as the ice eluded us, so too did the ice denizens we had come to see.

The only evidence that polar bears were anywhere in the neighborhood came from a stopover at Deadhorse, the supply post for the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay. On the inside of the door to the town's general store, a sign warned visitors to exit carefully. "There are bears outside," it warned. "Look before leaving. Bears are soooo cute, but their claws and teeth are sharp and they like to maul people." On the outside of the door, there was a freshly pinned notice, advising that a polar bear had been seen around town that very morning and that extra attentiveness was therefore warranted.

Two days later came the unexpected visit from our swimming, skinny bear; but after it had drifted forlornly into the distance, we saw no further sign of ice-loving ursids—or, indeed, much sign of ice at all—in the immediate area.

We steamed west and north, away from the Alaska coast and toward the Russian Arctic, in search of an ice edge. Within a week, we had found it, and when we did so, it came upon us neither gradually nor incrementally but with a suddenness and emphasis that threatened to grind us to a halt.

The
Arctic Sunrise,
while an icebreaker, was a relatively small one; it possessed nothing like the heft of, for example, the nuclear-powered Russian behemoths that plow their way to the North Pole each year for the benefit of paying tourists. Like all icebreakers, however, its hull was rounded and without a keel; that made the
Sunrise
an uncomfortable ride on the open ocean, as it bobbed around more like a cork than a seagoing vessel, but it enabled it to rise onto ice floes with relative ease, a characteristic of which Captain Arne Sorensen took ready advantage.

Smaller floes he would simply nudge to one side or thump out of the way; with larger, more formidable adversaries, Sorensen demonstrated an entirely more sophisticated and subtle technique. He would head directly for one, slow down shortly before reaching it and perhaps even put the engine into reverse, relying on the ship's momentum to carry it forward, and ride the ship gently onto the ice. Then once more he would crank up the engine, powering the ship forward and pushing the floe out of the way, in the process frequently steering the ship hard to starboard or port so that as the ice began to move, the vessel would fall away into open water. As it did that, Arne would ease up on the throttle anew to prevent the ship, suddenly no longer meeting resistance from a huge chunk of ice, from rushing headlong into another.

Initially, the ice edge encounter brought a rush of excitement to the
Arctic Sunrise;
crew interrupted watches and deck duties to lean over the bow and watch as Sorensen nudged small floes out of the way and slowly ground his way over and past larger ones. But as the afternoon unfolded, the ice became progressively thicker, and the bridge grew quieter as brows furrowed and focus sharpened. The percentage of water that was covered with ice now exceeded the percentage of water that wasn't, and ocean currents pushed floes into one another, compressing them, closing the ice into a mass that accumulated astern of us. Sorensen ascended to the crow's nest, affording him not only greater visibility but a separate set of steering controls, enabling him to look for leads through the ice and direct the ship toward them. The ship was enveloped in quiet, the scientific team peering keenly through binoculars in the hope of spotting marine life, the crew alternating between enthusiasm and uncertainty, the only noises the gentle throb of the ship's engines followed by a crash as the bow collided with a floe and the hull shook in protest at the force of the impact.

The task was not aided by the evening descent of fog, combining with the day's diminishing daylight to restrict visibility at times to no more than thirty yards. The ship slowed to a crawl as pieces of ice loomed out of the mist like ghouls on a fairground ghost train. When finally the fog lifted, the sense of relief was palpable.

"It is," observed the phlegmatic Sorensen, "so much easier when one can see where one is going."

When the fog had lifted, the view before us was as different as it was now starkly beautiful, as if in its ascent the mist had peeled away the largest, most threatening floes, leaving in their place a dead calm sea, with nary a ripple, let alone any kind of swell to disturb its flat surface. Scattered about were innumerable smaller chunks of ice, many of them curiously misshapen and twisted, all of them now drifting harmlessly past. It looked for all the world like the detritus from an unseen tornado, a scene of terrible yet beautiful devastation, pieces of ice strewn randomly across the sea surface by the hand of God.

We continued onward, north and west. Alaska receded far into the distance as we steamed into the waters of the Russian Arctic and closed in on our ultimate goal, the twin sentinels of Wrangel and Herald islands. Now we were certain we would find what we were looking for. Here, a combination of high latitude and the vagaries of ocean currents ensured that, even in late summer, sea ice was plentiful in thickness and extent. As a result, Wrangel and Herald combined to create a kind of polar bear paradise: a place where even under the harshest of conditions, the food supply was relatively plentiful and stable.

We steamed slowly along, poking our way through floes, grinding along the edge of the fast ice that remained firmly attached to the islands' coasts and stretched for miles outward, as the islands themselves reached defiantly upward before disappearing into the fog. Dark clouds of sea birds swarmed through the skies. As the hull of our icebreaker rose up onto, and then cracked through, the ice in our path, schools of tiny arctic cod scattered rapidly, desperately searching for shelter. Here and there we spied ringed seals. Ahead of us, looming out of the mist, an occasional floe revealed itself to be packed tightly with walruses, seeking safety in numbers from the predator that always prowled nearby.

And what a predator.

Our crew was a hardened bunch, accustomed to being at sea for weeks or months at a time, used to seeing wildlife and landscapes known to most people only through television. But when, after weeks of slow-building anticipation and days of fighting through the ice, the call finally came from the bridge that a polar bear was up ahead, it prompted the instant dropping of tools or abandonment of food in a mad rush to the bow.

This was a polar bear the way polar bears were meant to look: its fur thick and plush, its rump healthily rotund, its shoulders impressively muscular. It seemed not just to be walking across the ice but swaggering, as if surveying its kingdom and daring anyone or anything to encroach upon it. It carried, as only the most dominant predators do, the confident, almost arrogant bearing of an animal that felt no threat from fellow denizens in its kingdom. Its massive shoulders rolled with a self-assured poise reminiscent of an undefeated prizefighter.

"Oh, yeah," said one of the crew admiringly as we hunkered down to shelter from a biting wind that had no evident effect whatsoever on our companion. "Look at him. He owns the ice."

The bear seemed at first unaware of our proximity; but then it shuffled to the edge of the floe it was patrolling, sniffed the air, looked in our direction, briefly appeared to brace itself as if to jump into the water and swim toward us. It changed its mind, its ignorance of our presence evidently yielding to indifference toward it, turned around, and resumed its wandering, scratching at the ice, occasionally looking in our direction but mostly disregarding us as it continued on its way.

That day, and in days subsequent, there were several more encounters, several more occasions on which the
Sunrise
cut back its engines and eased quietly along an ice floe as a bear sauntered confidently nearby, several more instances when work would halt as, transfixed, crew and scientists alike stood silently as they watched the scene unfold in front of them.

At times it was hard not to imagine that greater forces of Nature were working to emphasize the rarity of the experience and the majesty of the animal at the heart of it. As if an unseen stagehand were operating a celestial spotlight, the sun abruptly shone on one bear just as we approached the floe that was its realm. Playing to the audience, the bear yawned theatrically and lay down, tucked its paws under its chin, placed its snout on them, and closed its eyes—occasionally opening them just a fraction to keep watch on the strange green iceberg in its midst. Then, receiving its cue from a director in the wings, it hauled itself to its feet, walked into a hollow in the ice, and posed for pictures with its front paws resting on the cavity wall.

Most regarded our intrusion with mild curiosity or indifference. Others appeared resentful or even hostile. One marched away, looking repeatedly over its shoulder like a reproached dog. Another, uncertain what to make of the interloper yet unwilling to back down in the face of its enormity, stood its ground, bobbing its head and hissing at us in a combination of fear and ferocity.

But then, unexpectedly, a bear would reveal a more vulnerable side. We slowed down, drifted to a halt, nosing into the ice as a bear lifted its head, sniffing the air and scenting our proximity. Slowly—not cautiously, but unhurried—it ambled toward us, curious as to the nature of the large object that had suddenly invaded its terrain. Above, seemingly unnoticed, a crew of thirty people leaned over the starboard bow, holding their collective breath and daring not to make a sound as the bear walked up to the hull, stretched its neck, sniffed, and all but touched its nose to the metal.

Then there was a high-pitched beep and the click of a camera shutter, and at once the bear whipped away from us, racing back across the ice before slowing down, looking over its shoulder, and then continuing in a lumbering trot. It paused, looked back toward us now, sniffed the air again, and as if to reassure itself that a polar bear could not possibly truly have been frightened by anything so inconsequential, seemed almost to square its shoulders as it recovered its natural swagger.

It strode up a small hummock, looked briefly in our direction once more, then disappeared down the other side and was gone.

In the dark
, beneath the snow and ice, the cubs stir.

It is almost spring in the Arctic, and the cubs are three months old. But they have yet to experience the warming glow of sunlight or the chill of the polar wind. The world in which they have spent the entirety of their short lives is a den hollowed out of snow, barely large enough to contain the cubs and the mother against whom they are curled tightly.

She had been inseminated in May, fully ten months previously, a few weeks after she had entered heat and attracted the attention of most of the males in her vicinity. But insemination did not lead at once to pregnancy. The eggs, although fertilized, did not immediately implant.

Once the cubs were born, the female would not eat for at least four months. So the eggs were held in abeyance while she readied herself for the onerous task that lay ahead; and in preparation for that task, she ate. More accurately, she gorged.

In this she was aided by the forces of evolution, which had ensured that the time in which she would be seeking sustenance was a bountiful one, for spring in the Arctic is a veritable polar bear buffet. This is the period when the seals they eat are both most abundant and most vulnerable to predation, when ringed seal pups are born and, six weeks later, weaned. Upon weaning, each pup may weigh up to sixty pounds, forty-five pounds of which might be calorie-laden body fat. And, at this young age, not one of these corpulent morsels has learned to fear or avoid predators, leading to what noted polar bear researcher Ian Stirling has described as a "superabundance of fat, naïve seal pups that enables the pregnant females to accumulate fat so quickly."