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A funny thing happened on the way to the airport….
Saturday morning was a bit quiet here at the studies centre. Like the lull before the storm. We were expecting a large group of elderhostel clients to descend on the place any time. Its always good to get outside even if it is well below zero. I jumped at the opportunity to go with Marie to the the airport to pick up a plane load of clients. Small planes up here. She gave me less than 5 minutes warning and I had to cut short my Skype conversation with Helena. I followed her to the studies centre suv and she said…no you are following me in the truck. We had been strictly warned there were two things we didn't mess with at the studies centre. One was firearms the other was motor vehicles. She jumped in and sped off. I walked to the truck keenly watched by the assistant director who asked if I was ok with this. I replied, sure its easy then proceeded to get in the front right hand side door. In this country the steering wheel is in the front left hand side door. She just shook her head and went inside out of the cold. Marie had left and I knew it was quite a long drive to the airport so I had better get going. I found the keys in the ignition and took a few seconds to realise it was a column shift automatic with a foot operated "parking brake". I couldn't see out of the iced up windscreen and couldn't find the wipers so wound down the window and stuck my head out. The road is mud and gravel with lots of big potholes. After a few hundred metres I found the wipers and accelerated to try to catch Marie. Then the back side door flew open and I noticed a huge plastic bag of empty beer cans sliding around the cargo area. No time to stop so I took the all left hand curves extra tight in order to swing the RHS door closed. It caught a few times but then sprung open again. I didn't want the bag of cans to go flying out on the 45 minute drive. I caught up with Marie and we walked into the terminal together after I managed to slam the door closed with several attempts. I still had this huge grin on my face from when I left the studies centre as the whole scenario was so unexpected. Marie greeted the clients and then I introduced myself. I was still wearing shorts and a tshirt as I expected to be hanging out at the research centre all day. Everyone insisted I pose with them for a photograph. This took some time.
I loaded all the baggage in the huge van being careful to bury the bag of beer cans so they were out of sight. I wasn't confident to open the side door so loaded all bags into through the back door. We had to do three more B&B pick ups of clients who had arrived a day early for the Polar Bear Program before returning to the research centre. On the way home we were all on the look out for critters which is the term long time residents use for PBs. I was the tour guide as I took one client with me in the van. I was amazed at how many questions I was able to answer. Then I thought of the Telstra ad on TV with the kid asking his dad all those questions for his school speech.
We spotted a very big male critter who was just beside the dirt road a few Km from "home". I fired of 40 shots and got some great images. Kept only a few.
During dinner, a message was broadcast over the research centre 2 way radio (loud enough for all to hear) from a researcher in a CNSC car, that a mother and her cubs were just outside the centre and that the director should be immediately warned. I sat in stunned silence. This did not go down at all well with the CNSC staff who were furious that a researcher should be so indiscreet as to spell out the perceived risk. I remembered a similar incident I was told happened a few years ago when a woman hearing a similar warning rushed outside with her camera and was only dragged back inside by staff at the last moment. She was gone permanently from the centre by morning, never to return again.
Later that night after dinner Nick Lunn, a world famous Polar Bear researcher delivered a lecture on Bears. He covered their size, diet, range reproduction and other interesting facts. He confirmed a point that had been made in two previous lectures I attended by Prof Peter Kershaw as well as Michael Goodyear (the Executive Director of the research centre) that Polar Bears are not drowning as a direct consequence of global warming as has been portrayed in a dramatic fashion by the media, in particular in a film released a few years ago. Nick had all the details where 4 Polar Bears were found drowned following an unusually huge storm with severe winds. The winds had blown the ice away from where it normally sits and the bears became exhausted and could not swim to the safety of the ice.
There are 935 polar Bears living in western Hudson Bay around Churchill. Nick had the radio collar data from a particular female bear named Nanuk. Last year it left the shore onto sea ice on November 21 and hunted ringed seals on the ice of Hudson Bay for 8 months. It travelled 2300Km in the year, some on foot and also on drifting ice floes. It returned to shore on July 18 and is now pregnant and in a den around Hudson Bay. They flew their helicopter over the signal and she popped her head out of the den. Not sure if she waved at Nick. The radio collars they now use cost $USD5000 and can be remotely exploded to release them from around the mature female's neck. They can't be fitted to males as their neck is cone shaped with the neck being bigger that the head. They are only fitted to mature females as their neck has stopped growing. I posted an earlier image of Linda from our EarthWatch group wearing a radio collar. She said it wasn't her most favourite accessory.
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