Bearded Seal
The largest seal in the Arctic. The surface shows only a portion of their life secrets, driven by underwater sound…
The bearded seal is resident and endemic to the Arctic and, meaning you won’t find it anywhere else than in such high latitudes. It needs drift-ice (broken and drifting) over shallow areas to feed on the bottom of the sea, where it finds sea worms and crustaceans. The long whiskers that give them name, help them sense the buried prey. While they rummage, the bottom sediments release iron that oxidizes in their face in contact with oxygen, giving them that rusty appearance.
As climate change continues, the preferred platform for the bearded seals, the sea-ice, disappears. Summer marks the minimum sea-ice extent annually, and freshwater glacier fronts calve tons of ice in the form of icebergs. Bearded seals and other species use it for their life activities when sea-ice is gone. However, it is not so easy for an animal of 400 kg to find a suitable piece. The seals in the images were lucky enough to find iceberg pieces big and flat, using it to complete the molt with lower energy cost. That’s why they looked so neat and shiny! This is a very important part of their annual cycle, and it happens after mating, which is the real deal for these animals.
Sometime in April the sun is finally shining without a break in Svalbard, sparking the hormones and other circadian messengers of the life in the Arctic. This has a dramatic effect on the animals’ behavior, including bearded seals. They start taking positions inside the fjords that will provide them an strategic advantage when the time comes, even though it’s early in the season and fast-ice (stable and fixed to land) cover the area.
They will use small holes and track the formation of long cracks across the fjord so they can haul out in favorable areas. As the crack grows, more and more seals are attracted.
Such areas with cracks along fast-ice attract polar bears that roam in search of prey. A bearded seal frequently using fast-ice takes higher risk of being killed than those breeding in the drift ice offshore. Newborn pups hauling out on fast-ice have greater mortality.
It’s May now, and the females will start to give birth to the calf from the previous season (11 months of gestation with delayed implantation). It is male’s show time, and they will chase away other males and advertise their breeding condition to the females weeks and even months before they are able to breed. They send clear messages: I am fit and ready to breed. The females won’t be able to breed until they give birth and enter ovulation towards the end of the lactation period, which typically lasts 24 days and during which females introduce pups to the underwater world while continuing to feed at the sea floor. But the mistery to this stroy still lingers in between the lines… How do males attract females?
To show it, we installed an underwater camera and sound recorder throught the ice crack, using the ice edge as an attach point to anchor the instruments. To be honest, much of what was going on underwater could be heard while walking on the waving ice. Push play!
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The icebergs stuck into the sea-ice act as a great wall for catching snow. This is of especial interest for ringed seals, as they not only keep breathing holes through the sea-ice, but also conceal these holes beneath the snow and build snow lairs where to keep their newborns in April. This is an essential feature of frozen glacier bays for polar bears during spring.
Polar bears patrol glacier bays and nearby areas where drifting icebergs accumulate and freeze, for these represent good hunting grounds for them. They may also use the icebergs as hides, and icebergs’ snowdrift accumulation as snowbeds where to rest between hunts. This means that a polar bear could be among us in an iceberg field, with us not having a chance to find it.
The rear foot of a polar bear compared to my EU 47 size. This track probably belongs to a mid-sized polar bear. Tracks like this could be hours old if there has been a bit of wind blurring the texture of the track, or days old if there has not been any wind but the snow crystals sinter due to the sun's effect. This makes it quite difficult to guess the age of the track with no further information.
The only way to find a polar bear… is to have luck and to spend time scouting with binoculars. Polar bears are masters of stealth, but the vast scale of the landscape makes it possible to spot them several kilometers away.
After some time scouting the bay, we manage to find some movement emerging from inside and iceberg chunk. A polar bear female with a cub of the year. The female-cub pairs benefit from the bay's more secluded environment. They recently emerged from the den in the mountains and mum has invested a lot of energy in a several-month fasting and milking period. They need to hunt seals quickly, without traveling too far or exposing the cub to the more challenging drift ice outside the bay in the open sea.
Mum and cub travel from iceberg to iceberg in search of seals. For the next months, the cub will learn everything by mimicking and playing, the second sometimes being a challenge for the mum to hunt. The diet for the cub will be a mix of fat-rich milk with seal (also fat-rich). Observing this behavior is a unique opportunity in a habitat that quickly vanishes. Svalbard has lost 40% of its fast-ice around the archipelago since the 80’s. Our trip to the East Coast is far more than just a fun trip. It is an experience that resonates in every one of us, as we witness one of the most pristine ecosystems on earth unfolding in front of us, both in subtle and raw, powerful ways.
Experience this for yourself!