This week’s video comes directly from Churchill..hot off the press, rather camera. Natural Habitat Adventures Churchill office staff member Joel Moore filmed this unique angle time lapse of some pretty awesome northern lights a few days ago. The scene is near the inukshuk behind the town complex. Very rarely does Churchill experience aurora with these kind of clouds moving below. The effect is pretty cool and inspiring for hopes for another outstanding northern lights season commencing in January. It will be tough to top last year’s explosive displays of aurora borealis though we hope to make a run at it! Enjoy.
This National Geographic video is a great look into the harsh yet magical world of the polar bear in the Arctic. While the winter is still creeping into the Churchill region, the next couple of weeks will reveal increasing numbers of polar bears and other Arctic wildlife. Before we know it there will be all kinds of action coming from Churchill and brought to you here on churchillpolarbears.org. This should be another amazing season up north with many surprises as it moves along!
Polar bear season is next up for avid travelers and Arctic enthusiasts heading to Churchill. However, this video time-lapse from Natural Habitat Adventures guide Brad Josephs gives us a sneak preview to the incredibly popular northern lights season beginning in January and continuing through March. The aurora borealis have been phenomenal over the past few years and there’s no better place in the north to see them than Churchill! This season should be one of the best ever!
Russian scientists were held captive on a small island off eastern Russia after they exhausted all their non – lethal flares and air horns. The group of five researchers had to endure two weeks of captivity in their compound on Troynoy Island inside the Arctic Circle.
Troynoy Island in the Kara Sea.
On August 31, a polar bear killed one of the watch dogs at the meteorological station and then lingered at the site. Nine other adult polar bears and four cubs then set up camp and at one point an adult female bear was sleeping under the station. Vadim Plotnikov, a scientist at the station described the situation; “A female bear has been sleeping under the station’s windows since Saturday night. It’s dangerous to go out as we have run short of any means to scare off the predators,” Plotnikov said. “We had to stop some of the meteorological observations.”
Global warming and the resulting early sea – ice melt is being blamed by the research group.
“The bears usually go to other islands, but this year they didn’t. The ice receded quickly and the bears didn’t have time to swim to other islands,” stated a spokesperson for the team. “There’s no food … so they came up to the station.”
A short video clip by National Geographic documenting springtime for beluga whales in the north. Belugas migrate south in the spring from the Hudson Straits to the estuaries of the Hudson Bay. Thousands of belugas make the trip to the warmer waters and shallow, gravelly rivers to give birth, nurture young and gorge on capelin and other plentiful marine organisms. There’s no other time like spring and summer in the Churchill region. Life is bursting from the tundra and the sea and rivers. What an amazing time to experience the northern web of life…Arctic style!
