Hudson Bay sea ice freeze-up in 2022 for 5th time since 2015
This is the fifth year out of the last seven that enough sea ice has formed along the west coast of Hudson Bay by mid-November for bears to be able to head out to the ice, just as it did in the 1980s.
One of the independent polar bear guides on the ground near Churchill had this to say about the bears and freeze-up conditions this year:
“Bears started leaving on November 10; conservation emptied the jail on the 10th as well.”
‘The jail’ is the Churchill Polar Bear Alert Program’s ‘holding facility’.
While the Alert program folks have not released a report for this week (gee, I wonder why?), nearby tourist outfit Great White Bear Tours not only confirmed the bears were released from jail but posted a picture of a ‘green dot bear’: the mark put on problem bears released from the holding facility to keep track of them.
Bears are not released before there is ample ice along shore for them to move out.
Great White Bear Tours have been tracking bears moving offshore.
This information suggests the average date for bears leaving shore will likely turn out to be 12-14 November, again earlier than the average for the 1980s (16 Nov +/- 5 days) (Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017).
That makes five out of the last seven years (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022) since 2015 that bears have left about the same time as they did in the 1980s.
While there are still be a few bears on the shore of Wapusk National Park that seem to be in no hurry to leave, a few stragglers doesn’t mean there isn’t ice available for hunting.
Sea ice conditions on Hudson Bay
This amount of ice is more than the long term average for this time of year (week of 14 November), according to the following CIS comparison chart, where blue is more than average and dark blue is much more than average:
Bears in no hurry to leave shore
Some bears in good condition appear to be in no hurry to get out onto the ice, as the images below from 12-17 November on the shore of Wapusk National Park, courtesy Explore.org.
This phenomenon seems to mirror the reluctance of some bears in early summer to leave the retreating ice even when there is very little left.
Only a couple of WH bears tagged by Andrew Derocher’s team had left shore by 11 November and he hasn’t yet updated this information.
As he’s done in the past, chances are he won’t post another tracking map until the bears are all offshore, so we won’t be able to tell when most of them left.
But perhaps he’ll surprise us this year.
References
Castro de la Guardia, L., Myers, P.G., Derocher, A.E., Lunn, N.J., Terwisscha van Scheltinga, A.D. 2017. Sea ice cycle in western Hudson Bay, Canada, from a polar bear perspective. Marine Ecology Progress Series 564: 225–233. http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v564/p225-233/
See more here polarbearscience.com
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Jerry Krause
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Hi Susan,
Thank you for bringing PSI Readers up-to-date about what is being actually observed (measure). Unfortunately it seems that most who comment do not appreciate reading about actual data that you share with us. It’s boring if one is not actually a SCIENTIST nor a reader who want to learn about what SCIENTISTS actually do.
Have a good day, Jerry
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JaKo
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Hi Jerry,
You seem to miss the “Mass Formation” of anti-science, or “corporate science” out there. Suzan was punished for telling the truth! I’d state the following: until the persons responsible for her ordeal are brought to justice (i.e., guillotine) and the Canadian ministry of “Environment and Climate Change” returns to its true mandate, there will never be peace.
Cheers, JaKo
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Jerry Krause
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Hi JaKo,
You had not written to encourage Susan as she has been ‘fighting’ popular opinions by gathering and sharing the data which takes her time and her energy. She is staying focused on her SCIENCE doing the only thing a SCIENTIST can and should do. Make (report) observations (experimental results) and share them with a bigger world in a way that the general PSI reader here at PSI can understand.
When you write about government you forget many times one is elected by maybe less than a 5% margin. Thus a politician has nearly half of the voters who disagree with him/her. Yet, in science such a situation should never occur because it is an observed fact that two completely different ideas cannot explain reproducible observations. Specially a SCIENTIFIC LAW.like when the air temperature and the air dew point temperature is measured at the same place and same time, the air temperature is never less the air dew point temperature. Hence, it cannot be accepted that the air temperature could ever be less than that measured for any reason except for a degree or two of experimental error.
Some one has to try to explain how long it is that polar bears have roamed the ice of Hudson Bay and the Arctic Sea during the winter.
Have a good day, Jerry
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