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Polar Bear Response to Sea Ice Loss

Hi Cristina, Its been great following you up in Barrow. It looks much warmer than when I was there!! I'm a bit confused about your project. I remember that some of the researchers (that I thought were from your team) took some samples from bears in the spring and had them stored in the freezer at the BARC building. Are you guys recapturing these same bears and taking new samples? Are you tagging new bears? What are you planning on doing with the new collars? What kinds of things are they hoping to learn from the various samples? Please clarify for me and my students what is going on with your data. Thanks!! Betsy Wilkening & Students Tucson, AZ

Tue, 09/29/2009 - 18:45

Cristina Galvan

Hi Ms Wilkening and class!Thanks for your questions - I actually had some of the same ones as well.
Hopefully, I can explain it all clearly.
The researchers went out in the spring to tag bears with GPS collars, take
samples and insert temperature probes to monitor the internal temperature
of the bears.
Our current main mission is to recapture the same bears, remove the
collars and temperature probes and to take new samples.
However, there are other objectives as well. You can imagine that very
few teams can get out to the sea ice to do this type of data collection
due to the logistics and expenses of getting to the Arctic Ocean.
There are two Fish and Wildlife Service people along as well, who have
other longer studies happening and will put new collars on bears that are
recaptured. Also, the team of University of Wyoming is hoping to come
back out next spring to collect more data on the same bears so they might
be putting collar on bears that they recapture as well. There is also a
possibility for "opportunistic captures" of bears. This refers to the
idea that while on the way to or from a bear that is part of the study, if
they see another bear that they might stop to take data on that bear as
well.
In terms of what they are hoping to find from the samples, well, there is
a lot of different types of things they are looking at. Once we have
samples to analyze, I'll go into more depth on this topic in a journal
entry. However, for now the general idea is to find out how the bear is
doing physiologically - looking at blood, breath, hair, and fat samples.
I hope that made it a bit more clear. If not, ask more questions!
Thanks,
Ms Galvan
PS. I didn't make it to BARC on the way out, but maybe I can drop by on
the way back in to look for your surprise :)