The gym is below the foc’sle, meaning it is below the main deck very near the bow. The floor in the gym slopes upward; I tried the treadmill for the first time, and decided to do a “hills” run. So, the already-leaning treadmill slowly tilted more then less, repeatedly, every one to two minutes, while I ran in place for 25 minutes. We were breaking moderate ice (probably around a foot thick) so the ship was rocking unpredictably as well, particularly when we encountered pieces of thick multi-year ice (many feet thick). By the time I stepped off the treadmill and tried to walk across the gym I was tilting pretty far myself. I walked slowly, from equipment to equipment, bracing myself as I went.

The gym is located near the bow of the ship; the bulkheads (walls) around the gym are on the outside of the hull, so the sounds of breaking ice can be incredibly loud. Last week I was in the gym when we were breaking very thick multiyear ice, and the sound was like being inside of a thundercloud. I would have had to yell to be heard by someone standing next to me, and the screeching and crunching completely drowned out my ipod. The large white tube in the corner runs from the foc’sle above to a room below the gym. The anchor chain is spooled below, where it is paid out or retrieved by a diesel powerplant up to the deck, where it hangs over the side and is attached to a 9000 lb anchor.

I have participated in other aspects of normal life aboard the ship as well. Last week I caught one of the movies shown nightly in the theatre: about 35 well-padded seats that rocked, as in a real theatre, facing a big-screen television. I got a haircut at the barbershop – there is even a striped pole in the hallway. “Pie in the face” voting took place across the ship for a week, and personnel who received the top 5 votes each took a turn sitting in a chair, surrounded by the crew, one night in the hangar. A vigorous auction took place for the right to be the person to actually sling the pie (gently; no broken noses were allowed). Last night I played bingo in the mess deck after dinner. Around 30 folks show up, once a week, and everyone plays three cards at once.

For most of my downtime I am trying to keep up with the course I am taking this fall (Biochemistry), reading research articles and preparing for an upcoming conference, and otherwise doing what I would be doing at my desk back in Laramie. Unfortunately space is fairly tight on the ship and desks are hard to come by so I do most of this work sitting on my bunk, which is just about 2 inches too small to allow me to sit all the way up.

I cannot view the dispatches myself, but it was passed on that someone asked about our rooms. Our room contains two bunkbeds (“racks”), four closet spaces (mine is visible at the right), and a chair. It is probably around 10 feet by 10 feet. The beds are narrow and long, and they lift for more storage space directly beneath the mattress. A vent in the ceiling delivers fresh air.

Recently, after the two days of transit the ship was hove to in very thick ice near Banks Island, which is in the southwestern corner of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

This view from the helicopter shows an area that may show up in a satellite image as mostly-covered with ice, but once we get out there and see it the ice pans are small and separated by open water, making it impossible to capture a bear.

This is the view from the portside main deck this morning, facing south. Thick, multi-year ice from the central Arctic flows south into this area, so the ice conditions are much better for captures. The ridges indicate areas where multiple ice pans have crashed together, and because they are thick pans the broken pieces stack up high where they catch windborne snow.

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 we first sampled on May 8th. She was in excellent condition, carrying lots of food reserves in the form of body fat: she had about 6 cm of subcutaneous fat near her rump. All of the sampling went well, but it was slow, partially because of the cold. Temperatures were around 15 degrees (Fahrenheit) during the sampling, which took several hours. It was our first fairly cold day, and a good reminder of the difficulties we may encounter if it gets much colder. Temperatures have continued to drop; as I write, it is 8 degrees with a windchill of -11 degrees.

This 22-month old cub belonged to one the bears we recently recaptured.

This adult female had two 10-month old cubs with her. We waited in the helicopter as the bears walked past, until they got into a good position for a capture.

Outside of Deadhorse, we drove through fields that provide oil which flows through the trans-Alaska pipeline to Valdez. Oliktok is northwest of Deadhorse, and I was told it is the farthest north you can drive in North America. Oliktok Point is a spit of land that juts into the ocean, and the US Air Force maintains a radar site for scanning the skies along the northern coast. The radar site was built during the Cold War, and is one of several such sites scattered along the coasts of Alaska.

Oliktok is much different than either Deadhorse or Kaktovik (a town farther east on the Alaska coast). The radar site is normally operated by crews of 2 people, but rooms and meals can be provided for up to 12. An oil drilling facility is just down the coast, but this area feels much more isolated. The living quarters are in a single long, narrow building that seems like a ship on the inside. All visitors here are required to watch an informational video about polar bear safety. Polar bears are frequently seen in the area and in fact, a tragic attack occurred here in 1993. A polar bear broke through a closed window to attack a man sitting in the living space. The bear mauled the man and other people at the facility were forced to shoot it. You can read the full story here. Since then, precautions have been taken to make the facility safer, such as placing grating over the windows. Such an attack is an incredibly rare event, but serves as a reminder to use caution in the habitats of wild animals.

Skies were blue and temperatures climbed into the upper 60s (Fahrenheit) and maybe even 70s our first several days here. This unseasonable heat felt odd – I expected to be wearing a light winter coat rather than a t-shirt. Yesterday heavy fog and cooler temperatures returned. Hopefully skies will clear and we will be able to fly again tomorrow. The tundra is completely transformed from May, and summer is in full bloom.

A tundra-covered island off the coast, pocked with small ponds.

A large herd of caribou, grazing near piles of driftwood on the coast.

Thus far we have caught two adult females, each with twin male cubs. It is great to see bears again. After working with polar bears last August, last October, in the spring this year, and now seeing them again in August, I am beginning to get a better understanding of their annual patterns. For example, their fur is much thinner in August and many bears are still shedding heavily. By October, their fur was deeper, and by spring the fur was quite deep with very distinct layers of coarse guard fur and thick underfur.

A large adult male polar bear, anesthetized and laying on a gray tarp for BIA analysis.

Footprints of the same male. His footprints are side-by-side and consist of two rounded prints topped with short, sharp imprints from his claws. My handprint, small by comparison, is just to the right.

Without food, it is generally thought that animals go through 3 phases of fasting. Phase I occurs directly after a meal, when an animal breaks down carbohydrates from the food for energy. In phase II, hours to days have passed since that meal. The animal begins to burn its body fat for energy, and importantly, the animal mostly avoids breaking down its protein (e.g. its muscles) for energy. Finally, in phase III, the animal runs out of body fat and begins to burn its protein for energy. These three phases are broad categories, and many animals prolong a phase or a transition between phases to survive periods without food. Polar bears in the summer may be in a prolonged phase II – we plan to find out using BIA and other measurements.

Weather has been poor this week. It has been overcast with temperatures mostly in the teens (Fahrenheit), and snowfall and ice fog dramatically reduced visibility. Some days we have not been able to fly at all; other days we launched but flew only several miles before being turned back by low visibility and icing conditions. Our helicopters are only instrumented for flight with visual references (in other words, they do not have the instruments which commercial airliners can rely on in reduced visibility) and there is no point in flying when you cannot see bears. While we wait for better weather I have been able to get other work done – and I have managed to catch the last twenty minutes of “The Incredible Hulk” movie twice, on the television in our living space. The skies began clearing during dinner this evening. Hopefully we will get out tomorrow!

On a recent capture, brief sunshine ended when this bank of clouds and snow followed us home.

This week has been very windy as well. At capture sites, we set up a wind shelter to make sampling easier. Collection bags full of bear breath are visible in the near side of the shelter.

Open water is appearing as the sea ice breaks up and begins melting. I took this photo from our helicopter yesterday, about twenty miles north of the Arctic coastline.

Polar bears mate in the spring. Females undergo delayed implantation; the fertilized egg does not implant into the wall of the uterus and begin development until autumn. Delayed implantation is unusual, but a surprisingly large number of mammal species do it. Despite much research, there is no consensus on the function of delayed implantation. Pregnant female polar bears dig dens in snow (and in some parts of the Arctic, into earth) in the fall then spend the winter in the den. They give birth to young sometime in December-January then the entire family emerges from the den in the spring.

This little bear is known as a C.O.Y. for “cub of the year.” Most of the COYs we have caught weigh around thirty pounds, and are still nursing. Usually, they will remain with their mothers until they are just over 2 years old, when they become independent. At this capture we have anesthetized both the mother and, with a very light dose, the cub; that is why the tip of his tongue is sticking out.

This is a one year-old that is still with its mother; it weighs 220 lbs. Around this time next year, it should become independent.

Research published in 2007 found that the subunit of polar bears in western Hudson Bay was a declining population. There are many mechanisms that can lead to population decline; in western Hudson Bay, survival of very young and very old polar bears has fallen over about the last 20 years, in concert with an advancing date of sea ice breakup in the spring. It is unknown exactly how sea ice decline affects polar bears, although it is likely that poorer ice conditions reduces the ability of bears to hunt. A goal of our project is to track changes in the physiology of polar bears during the summer, with particular attention to how changes may be affected by declining sea ice. This will help us understand why the western Hudson Bay population is declining, and how other subunits may be affected.

As the warm weather continues, we also have clear skies and good visibility, so we have been getting out for a lot of captures. Very long days – typically we fly out in the morning, perform captures throughout the day, then finish up lab work around midnight – but we are getting a lot of great data.