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John WhitemanJohn Whiteman says that most of his fun comes from thinking about how events outside an animal affect events inside an animal. For his PhD research, he’s studying how warm weather during summer can make hunting difficult for polar bears, forcing them to make seasonal adjustments such as living off of their own body fat. He’s also investigating how these adjustments may be affected by longer Arctic summers caused by climate change.

Project Page: The Bears of Summer

All Posts By John Whiteman


Foxes on the Edge

DEADHORSE, ALASKA-- Arctic fox seem to make their living by following bears around and scavenging. We have seen foxes trailing behind bears as they travel, and their tracks often wind around bear prints... {Read More »}



Some Time to Think

DEADHORSE, ALASKA-- One of the reasons the polar bear diet is interesting is that it is fairly simple in comparison to the closely-related brown bear (grizzly bear). Polar bears mainly eat seals, and this is reflected in their dentition... {Read More »}



Back in the Air

KAKTOVIK, ALASKA-- The captures have been going well. We caught the largest bear I have seen, an adult male who weighed 1,147 lbs. His neck was several times the size of my waist, and I could not fit both hands around his snout... {Read More »}



From the Andes to the Arctic

LARAMIE, WYOMING-- It may seem odd to jump from polar bears in the Arctic to grazing animals high in the Andes mountains, but animals face similar challenges in both places... {Read More »}



You Can’t Control the Weather

BARROW, ALASKA-- One afternoon a young adult female polar bear wandered by the ship. She appeared out of the blowing snow and walked past the stern, fairly close to the ship. An hour later she reappeared and approached the ship... {Read More »}



Life on the Ship

ABOARD THE USCGC POLAR SEA, ON THE BEAUFORT SEA-- For captures, we need calm winds, good visibility, thick continuous ice, and a good bear location. Those factors came together to allow us to recapture an adult female... {Read More »}



Another Recapture, and Big Seas

ABOARD THE USCGC POLAR SEA, ON THE CHUKCHI SEA– Over the last week we kept the ship in the same general area, in the northern reaches of the Chukchi Sea. Several days of cooler weather allowed the ice to thicken a little, and we had another successful recapture of an adult female with her cub... {Read More »}



Catching Our First Bears, Based on a Tiny Floating City

ABOARD THE USCGC POLAR SEA, ON THE ARCTIC OCEAN– We have all adjusted quickly to life on a ship, but every once in a while, it is still quite striking to remember that we are on a very small, floating city, in one of the most remote places on earth... {Read More »}



Searching for Ice in the Arctic

ABOARD THE USCGC POLAR SEA, ON THE ARCTIC OCEAN-- This morning at breakfast we received word that we were within 20 miles of the last known location of a bear we are targeting for capture. Over the previous 24 hours we had cruised through several hundred miles of open water... {Read More »}



Finally at Sea

ABOARD THE USCGC POLAR SEA, ON THE BEAUFORT SEA-- After writing the last dispatch, I had a nearly sleepless night in Barrow because I was so worried about all the details involved with getting all the gear and people onto the ship the next day... {Read More »}