Polar Bears Come To Visit Meteorologists on Bolshevik Island

The bear carefully hiding the baby from outsiders. Photo: Andrey Paramzin / Krasnoyarsk Regional Branch of the RGS
The bear carefully hiding the baby from outsiders. Photo: Andrey Paramzin / Krasnoyarsk Regional Branch of the RGS

For an accurate weather forecast, it is important to receive meteorological data from all over our vast country. Weather stations are operating even in the most remote corners of Russia for this reason. One of them is located at the permanent research facility Cape Baranov Ice Base in the northwestern part of Bolshevik Island of the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. Here, on the shore of the Shokalsky Strait, you will not meet people, but polar bears can easily come to visit. Andrey Paramzin, an employee at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, told representatives of the Taimyr Branch of the Russian Geographical Society about one of these meetings.

Recently, a bear with a cub came to the high-latitude Arctic observatory. The masters of the Arctic came quite close, and people managed to take photos of them.

“Aerologist Igor Afonin, early in the morning, when everyone was still asleep, releasing an aerological probe, discovered a bear and a bear cub who approached the border of the station. The bears stayed at a safe distance for half a day and, without entering the research base, left the shore to hunt seals. We managed to take photos of this rare predator," Andrey Paramzin said.

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Guests of the polar station. Photo: Andrey Paramzin / Krasnoyarsk Regional Branch of the RGS
Guests of the polar station. Photo: Andrey Paramzin / Krasnoyarsk Regional Branch of the RGS

The polar bear is a strictly protected species listed in the Red Books of all kinds. Four polar bear populations live in the Russian Arctic: the Barents Sea population, the Kara Sea population, the Laptev Sea population, and the Chukotka-Alaskan population. Scientists are keenly interested in their condition, since the formidable predator serves as an indicator of many natural processes.

The real masters of the northern circumpolar regions of the Earth feel comfortable in the harsh cold and polar nights but suffer from climate change and the consequences of human activity. There are a lot of difficulties in the life of a polar bear right now.