'Despite the fact that the polar bears of Southern Hudson Bay (SHB) live further south year round than any others, a recent study found their average body weight has declined relatively little since the 1980s. There has been no decline in the size of the population over that time either. Perhaps that’s why there was neither a press release nor a massive media blitz when this paper came out earlier this month.
Remarkably – despite what we are told about how critical breakup dates are to polar bear health and survival in Hudson Bay – this study found that for SHB bears, the small decline in body condition index correlated only with freeze-up dates, not breakup dates or length of the ice-free season. They also found that regional breakup and freeze-up dates relevant to polar bears in this area was the day when ice cover reached 5% (not 50%).
In other words, SHB polar bears left the ice (or returned to it) when the average ice cover near the coast was about 5%. This finding is yet more evidence that the meteorological definition of “breakup” (date of 50% ice cover) used by many researchers (see discussion here) is not appropriate for describing the seasonal movements of polar bears on and off shore.
Is losing weight significant?
Martin Obbard and colleagues determined that in the 2000s, females on average were about 31 kg lighter than they were in 1980s and males 45 kg lighter. But the number of bears in the population did not decline over the same period (Obbard et al. 2015), which suggests that fact is not especially significant.'
https://polarbearscience.com/2016/03/23/condition-of-s-hudson-bay-polar-bears-va...More crap from the garudian.
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Polar Bear numbers are NOT decreasing! (Read 1130 times)
