Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A boatload of tourists in the far eastern Russian Arctic thought they were seeing clumps of ice on the shore, before the jaw-dropping realisation that some 200 polar bears were roaming on the mountain slope.
"It was a completely unique situation," said Alexander Gruzdev, director of the Wrangel Island nature reserve where the encounter in September happened. "We were all gobsmacked, to be honest."
The bears had come to feast on the carcass of a bowhead whale that washed ashore, later resting around the food source. The crowd included many families, including two mothers trailed by a rare four cubs each, Gruzdev told AFP.
Climate change means ice, where polar bears are most at home, is melting earlier in the year and so polar bears have to spend longer on land, scientists say.
This might wow tourists but means the bears, more crammed together on coasts and islands, will eventually face greater competition for the little food there is on land.
Locals are also at risk from hungry animals venturing into villages.
Wrangel Island, off the coast of Russia's Chukotka in the northeast, is where polar bears rest after ice melts in early-August until November, when they can leave land to hunt for seals.
It is also considered the birthing centre for the species, with the highest density of maternity dens in the entire Arctic, Gruzdev said.
"A whale is a real gift for them," he said. "An adult whale is several tens of tonnes" that many bears can feed on for several months.
Studies have shown that, compared with 20 years ago, polar bears now spend on average a month longer on Wrangel Island because "ice is melting earlier and the ice-free period is longer," said Eric Regehr, from the University of Washington, the lead American scientist on the US-Russian collaborative study of Wrangel Island polar bears.
Changing ice conditions could also be responsible for the increasing number of bears flocking there, Regehr said.
This autumn, the number of bears observed was 589, far exceeding previous estimates of 200-300, he said, calling it "anomalously high".
[...] "We cannot stop climate change, but we can sort out the situation on the shore and make life easier for the bears," he said, referring to measures such as bear patrols to minimise conflict with humans.
"With changes in nature, that has to be attended to."
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 24 2017, @11:54PM (5 children)
I got a short video on the "impartiality" link about Planet Nine where they said computer simulations showed it was around 20 times further from the Sun than Earth. Yes... closer than Neptune. Sigh.
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(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday November 25 2017, @05:11AM (4 children)
Well, just a few years back, perhaps a couple of decades, Pluto was planet 9 and it was closer then Neptune.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 25 2017, @05:21AM (3 children)
<pedantic>Pluto's perihelion is 29.658 AU, not ~20 AU.</pedantic>
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(Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Saturday November 25 2017, @05:40AM (2 children)
Good point, though to be pedantic, you would have been better to have said that it was around the orbit of Uranus. Aphelion 20.11 AU
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday November 25 2017, @07:51AM (1 child)
But Uranus is planet 9.
Where planet 8 is? There is no planet 8. God forgot to create it. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday November 25 2017, @08:56AM
#MakeCeresPlanetFive [wikipedia.org]
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