The eye-opening science of encounters with polar bears

IT’S a pretty risky business trying to take a blood sample from a polar bear - one of the most dangerous predators on the planet - on an Arctic ice floe.

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First you have to find it and then shoot it with a sedative dart from a helicopter before a vet dares approach on foot to put a GPS collar around its neck.

Then the blood has to be taken and a delicate incision made into a layer of fat before it wakes.

All this with a wind chill of up to -30°C.

For the last four decades experts from the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) have been keeping tabs on the health and movement of polar bears in the Svalbard archipelago, halfway between Norway and the North Pole.

Like the rest of the Arctic, global warming has been happening there three to four times faster than elsewhere.

But this year the eight scientists working from the Norwegian icebreaker Kronprins Haakon are experimenting with new methods to monitor the world’s largest land carnivore, including for the first time tracking the PFAS “forever chemicals” from the other ends of the Earth that finish up in their bodies.

A photographer joined them on this year’s eyeopening expedition.

With one foot on the helicopter’s landing skid, vet Rolf Arne Olberg put his rifle to his shoulder as a polar bear ran as the aircraft approached.