Photographs by Neil Ever Osborne; Text by Neil Ever Osborne and Mark Jacquemain

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | March 2021

On the bay this fall morning, there’s a wind-carved rim of ice and a gathering of floes. One male polar bear, bony after a season without seal blubber, struggles along the slushy edge, haunches soaked, nearly slipping into the sea.

We are on Gordon Point, in northern Manitoba, where Hudson Bay widens into its northwest crescent. Polar winds make it colder than at comparable latitudes, and the shallow waters of the bay freeze early. Having passed the summer months in the subarctic wild of Wapusk National Park to the south, polar bears now congregate here, waiting for the ice to come in.

Source: Polar Bears Live on the Edge of the Climate Change Crisis | Science | Smithsonian Magazine