Day 9

The polar adventure is slowly coming to an end. I thought you may enjoy some of the highlights of the trip through pictures.
Our last day of seedling counting. A popular phrase by Peter is givin'r. That means lets get'r'done. He also would say "these seedlings are not going to count themselves." After 7 days of counting seedlings in random sites, I feel pretty confident that I know the difference between a black spruce, white spruce and larch.
Tonight Peter will reveal the meaning of our many days of data collection.
You may have noticed the plaster footprint of a polar bear in the picture above. Last nights presentation was given by a researcher at the station named Mike Goodyear. He showed us this footprint to help us realize the size of a polar bear. A male can weigh between 900-1200 pounds and stand over 10 feet tall. They come into Churchill on the ice and stay here until around November or December. They depend on the ringed seals for food. There are approximately 935 polar bears in this region. However, we all find this hard to believe since we have seen none. I guess October and November are the best time to see bears. They are waiting for the freeze to go back on the ice.
One of the highlights of the trip was to go on the zodiac tour. The picture above is the beluga whales that we saw. There were 10 to 20 pods of whales all around our zodiac. It was difficult to film these white friendly creatures that seem to think we were most interesting. They appeared to be shy because when they were within one foot of the boat they would not surface. My video of these massive mamals resembles long brown shaddows in the water.