Polar Bear Research Trip 2019

Kelvin Polar Bear Research Trip

It is that time of year when the temperature gets cold, the snow starts to fall, and a group of Kelvin students takes the long trek up to Churchill to study polar bears. The bears are just starting to congregate at the edge of the Hudson Bay, waiting to get onto the sea ice for their first meal in many months.  We have just arrived back from another successful research trip with Dr. Jane Waterman where 12 Kelvin students joined some students from Elmwood High School and Nelson MacIntyre to research the impacts of climate change on the local polar bear population. We started with an eight hour bus ride to Thompson followed by an overnight train across the tundra to Churchill. The first day we met the students joining us from Churchill and Gillam, went dog sledding, had a great meal at the Churchill Northern Studies Center (CNSC), and listened to a talk by Dr. Waterman. The next two days were spent on the tundra buggy where we were busy taking photographs of the bears. They were quite entertaining as we watched them sleep, roll around, jump and play, stretch, sleep some more, and even walk right towards us. The most exciting part was when we saw two male bears sparring right in front of us during both of the days that we were out. These photos will be analyzed by the students in an attempt to determine whether the early sea ice break-up is affecting the body condition of the polar bears in the Wapusk region. On our last day we walked on the tundra around the CNSC and toured the old rocket range. Then we had a talk by Roger Dube about Space Weather storms, and had a discussion about the book, Night Spirits: the Story of the Relocation of the Sayisi Dene. After lunch we toured Cape Merry and the many murals around Churchill that were painted by artists from around the world to draw attention to the difficulties that the people in Churchill were facing because of the train closure. We finished off our time with some delicious Moose stew provided by Mervin and cooked by Jill, both Canadian Rangers involved with the program. We were fortunate to get a flight home even when many had been cancelled and are now excited to start analyzing the data.

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