![]() They were more interested in the other end of the food chain, in a hidden and vibrant world of green beneath, and within, the ice formed by microscopic algae. The record-breaking dive under Arctic iceīut while the bears were captivating to watch, the team of scientists I was following considered them an inconvenience to their research.It must have somehow smelt them through the thick metal. We watched one evening from the safety of the ship as a bear tore at our mooring ropes and smashed in a flight case containing the wrappers from our sandwich lunch. ![]() Polar bears are one of the most impressive animals on the planet and, during our week on the ice, we were lucky enough to see several. Had we failed, and a bear threatened anyone's survival, there was a last resort: every group on the ice had a gun to shoot a bear dead. As the BBC reporter on the ship (you can still hear the archived programme here) – hardly an essential role – I spent a lot of my time assigned to scanning the horizon with binoculars looking for one of the few animals on Earth that thinks of humans as prey. ![]() Whenever a team of scientists was out on the ice, at least two people were on polar bear lookout duty. I was stationed on the top deck of a UK polar research vessel, the RRS James Clark Ross, moored to an ice floe some 800km (500 miles) from the North Pole. Despite their sizeable bulk, trying to spot creamy-coloured bears against the flat white Arctic sea ice that blends into a light grey overcast sky is quite the challenge. ![]() Spend any time looking for polar bears and you soon realise how perfectly adapted they are to hunting. ![]()
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