Answered by Dr. Steven C. Amstrup, Ursid & Arctic Marine Team Leader at the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center in Anchorage, Alaska. He also serves on PBI's Wild Bear Advisory Committee. “Giving polar bears a place to rest doesn't solve their main problem. . .”
Q: This may seem like a simplistic or even silly solution, but can you "seed” the Arctic with floating platforms for polar bears? This would give the bears something to rest on in the absence of ice floes. When (or if) the weather were to become cold enough to start building the ice and snow up again, these platforms could serve as starting cells.
Is this idea just too silly? I am growing increasingly concerned about the bears and seeing that they are now drowning, I think something must be done. (Note: Several people came up with this idea after seven polar bears drowned off the coast of Alaska.)
A: The problem with disappearing ice is that ice is the platform from which polar bears hunt. Polar bears are adapted to a few very specific kinds of predation strategies, all of which depend upon access to seals at the air/sea/ice interface.
Giving polar bears a place to rest doesn't solve their main problem, which is how to catch something to eat in an ice-free environment. Hence, the idea of floating platforms—even if you could figure out how to anchor them in thousands of feet of water (100 miles north of Prudhoe it is 10,000-feet deep)—does not solve the main problem that polar bears are likely to face in the future.
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