Temp: 29 F  Weather: Snow falling all morning, then mostly sunny, 0-5 knot winds

Very early this morning we passed by Barter Island, the home of the Native village of Kaktovik. Kaktovik is a whaling community on the Beaufort Sea coast in far eastern Arctic Alaska. Whaling happens in the fall, when the bowheads are migrating from Canadian waters toward Russian waters. Each year after the village finishes processing a whale the carcass is taken to a bone pile outside of town. The bone pile attracts scavengers: gulls, Arctic foxes, and polar bears.

(Photo: The Northernmost Snowman of the Year!)

Follow the Healy's route on this map.

The ice left fast this year; with climate change, it's melting and receding north earlier, leaving polar bears stranded on land with a choice to make: swim far and try to find the ice, or stay on land and try to find food in a foreign environment.

Unlike grizzly/brown or black bears, polar bears are not particularly resourceful. They have a certain search image for food, and they tend to stick to it: ringed seals, bearded seals, walrus, whale carcasses, and the like. They don't operate like a coastal brown bear, eating fish and berries, and turning over rocks with curiosity. Polar bears that stay on land for the summer often get very skinny. This is what compels them to take off swimming, sometimes a couple hundred miles to the ice. And they don't always make it to their destination. Every animal, no matter how well suited to their environment, needs a rest. Thus the Snowy Owl on our bow yesterday; he may have been heading for the ice edge too.

So, the bone pile in Kaktovik is a major attraction for polar bears. It’s such an attraction that last month there were 60 to 80 bears there at one time! We worked today in nearby Camden Bay, thinking this might be the day we finally get to see a polar bear. But no such luck. We were just far enough offshore to miss seeing land; the landfast ice is forming along the coast, but is not far enough out yet to intersect our path. The ice is growing quickly all around us, and maybe we'll get lucky enough to see a polar bear in the next few days.

On another note, I have an exciting proclamation! Today my new friend Bruce built a snowman on the flight deck of the Healy. Bruce is an underwater acoustics expert from Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, California. He's lived in southern California all of his life, so snow has been a rarity for him. This was his first snowman ever. And since we are north of the Alaska coast, I've declared this the most northern snowman in the United States today. So there you have it—we might not have seen a polar bear but we did make history.

 Melanie Smith, Landscape Ecologist, Audubon Alaska