Nanook of the North

Nanook of the North, the inspiration for the title of my blog, is a 1922 silent documentary by Robert J. Flaherty, a prospector and explorer in Arctic Canada that lived among Inuit. The full title is actually Nanook of the North: A Story Of Life and Love In the Actual Arctic. I love that… the “actual Arctic”. In 1922 however the actual Arctic would have been largely unknown and mysterious. In the documentary Flaherty, who was familiar with his subjects and set out to document their lifestyle, captures the life and struggles of the Inuk Nanook and his family in northern Quebec on Hudson Bay.

As the first nonfiction work of its scale, Nanook of the North was ground-breaking in cinema. It captured an exotic culture in a remote location, rather than a re-enactment of reality using actors and props on a studio set. Traditional Inuit methods of hunting, fishing, igloo-building, and other customs were shown with accuracy, and the compelling story of a man and his family struggling against nature met with great success in North America and abroad. I wonder has anyone seen it? We’ll have to have a viewing of it when I get home. There is also a 1994 film about the making of Nanook of the North, in which a distant relative of Nanook plays his role.

When I hear ‘Nanook’, however I think of Nanook’s namesake… the great white bear of the North. Nanuq means polar bear in Inuktitut, and I have come to learn a great deal about polar bears since I came to live on Baffin Island. You watch a wildlife documentary or two and think you have a good understanding of the world, but there are a number of important misconceptions about polar bears portrayed in recent documentaries. Before I came to Iqaluit, when I pictured polar bears I pictured that lone bear swimming out into the open water of the Arctic… only a few small chucks of ice remain so there is no way for him to catch the seals he is so dependent on… how is he going to survive? It’s heart wrenching… You quickly conclude that wild polar bears will not be of this world for much longer due to the accelerating impacts of global climate change in the North. The reality is a little different…

Don’t get me wrong… I am in no way a climate change nay-sayer. The polar bear, as the world’s largest land carnivore and an Arctic phenom, is something of an enigma, and has quickly become the poster child for climate change. There is little doubt that global climatic change is and will continue to impact polar bears, but presently the picture is not as bleak as some would have the world believe. There are 13 sub-populations of polar bears in Canada, making up as much as 65% of the global population, and only four of those subpopulations have been determined to be at risk of declining over the next three generations. Seven of the 13 populations are expected to remain stable or actually even increase. The impacts of climate change are the most dire in Hudson Bay, the furthest southern reaches of the species’ range. Nonetheless, the reality is polar bears cannot persist without seasonal sea ice to hunt seals; therefore the continuing decline in seasonal sea ice – which is indeed happening at an alarming rate - makes it very likely that a range reduction will occur in the southern parts of the species’ range.

Great picture of some curious bears checking out a submarine... they are incredibly curious.

Here’s a shocking statistic for you… an adult male polar bear can weigh as much as 1500 pounds! Adult females are about half that size. Polar bears have evolved to occupy a narrow ecological niche (i.e. how a species ‘makes a living’), with body characteristics well adapted for cold temperatures, moving across snow and ice, swimming in open water, and hunting seals (especially ringed seals), which make up the majority of their diet. The polar bear is an enormously powerful predator and can kill an adult walrus weighing as much as twice its size, although they rarely attempt this. Polar bears spend much of their life in or on the sea, and in fact, their scientific name, Ursus maritimus, means ‘maritime bear’, with some biologists often regarding them as a marine mammal. They are thought to have evolved from a population of brown bears that became isolated during a period of glaciation, and in fact there is confirmed evidence of hybrids between polar bears and brown bears (or grizzly bears) - which we fondly refer to around the office as ‘grolar’ bears.

Polar bears have long been an important subsistence animal for Arctic indigenous peoples, including the Inuit of Canada. I can’t imagine the act of bravery it must have taken to attempt a polar bear kill using a spear! Traditional subsistence hunting was on a much smaller scale than today however and did not significantly affect polar bear populations. Today the annual harvest of polar bears in Canada is in the hundreds of bears (as high as 500), with Nunavut making up 80% of these kills. Many biologists believe that this rate to not sustainable, especially in the face of climate change. Management is complicated by the fact that in some areas science suggests that populations are in decline, whereas many communities are reporting increases in polar bear sightings, leading to a belief that populations are actually increasing. Scientists respond that bears, hungry due to a lack of sea ice for hunting seal, are congregating around communities leading to the illusion that populations are higher than they actually are. The issue remains unresolved and quite contentious.

Most people who live in the Arctic never get to see a polar bear, especially in Iqaluit. They very rarely come close to town, and those that do are not often long of this world. I only saw polar bears the one time, last September on a boat trip some distance out into Frobisher Bay we saw a mother and her two cubs from quite a distance – a very thrilling experience and one of the highlights of my Arctic experience over the past year.

There is so much more I could say about polar bears.... they are an incredible animal and Arctic survivor. It is amazing what mother polar bears endure in the name of procreation... and it is amazing how tiny and adorable those baby polar bears really are!