With the ice far, far north, many bears have been stranded on land this summer. Nothing new here as this is one of the strategies bears can have. Either they try to stay on the ice, where they have to move vast distances to find their seals or they remain on land, where they rest a lot and wait for the ice to return. These bears try to use as little as energy as possible and can go up to 8 months without food (if they were well-fed at the start of summer of course).

Karl XII-øya is a small island north of Nordaustlandet, a place that usually has ice for a long time at the start of summer. But this year, the ice was already gone in June, and several bears got stuck on this small rock. This time we got lucky and two bears came close to the shore and gave away an excellent show. One of the bears was quite thin and looked very scruffy, while one of the others was in much better condition. So even under the same conditions, different bears will do differently. Also depending of course on the condition they had when they arrived on the island.