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THE Inuit people of the Arctic have always known about it, but no outsiders have witnessed it for 200 years: a polar bear fishing. Not by scooping the fish out of the water like a brown bear - but by plunging in and swimming.
Polar bears live mainly on seals caught on the sea ice, so the shrinking of the Arctic ice pack is a real worry. Now it seems they may have found other sources of food, New Scientist has reported.
Last August, researchers based in Iqaluit, Canada, watched an adolescent polar bear swimming in a river estuary packed with charr, a relative of salmon, that was migrating upstream. It caught about one fish an hour, swimming and peering into the water, then diving. In the two days they saw the bear, it caught three charr and three sculpin, a spiny fish that lives under rocks - which the bear seemed to lose enthusiasm for eating.
The closely related brown bear catches fish very differently, by lunging and splashing in shallow water. As young polar bears learn hunting techniques from their mothers, the team speculates that this fishing technique could be widespread. But while polar bears easily get enough energy from fat, meaty seals to warrant the effort of catching them, it is not clear if this will be true of the fish they catch.
The article appeared first in issue 2623 of New Scientist magazine, 27 September 2007, page 16.
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