I had long dreamed of photographing polar bears. Some time ago my hobby, animal photography, has become not only a hobby but a big part of my life. And when you devote so much time to an activity, your goals should be ambitious. My favorite thing to photograph is large sea creatures, whether on land or underwater. Not everyone knows, but zoologists classify polar bears as marine mammals because they spend most of their time on ice floes out of the country. And their paws even have straps.
There are few places on earth where polar bears can be found in large numbers. One of these is Russia’s Wrangel Island, a UNESCO-protected nature reserve often referred to as a polar bear maternity ward. The place is very inaccessible which can be bad for tourists but great for the animals.
Preparations for the expedition to Wrangel took almost two years, and last August we finally set out for northern Chukotka on a small ice-class sailing yacht. We cruised approximately 2,000 km (1,200 miles) along the coast, stopping at secluded coves and photographing gray and humpback whales. We met an incredible number of different birds, several brown bears, sea lions and seals. We went diving in the waters of the Chukchi Sea, which turned out to be teeming with life. I felt like I was in a parallel universe. Days and weeks passed. Landscapes have changed dozens of times: sunny pebble beaches, steep cliffs, mountains and tundra. Finally, after passing Cape Dezhnev and heading towards Wrangel Island, we began encountering floating sea ice, which was unusual for the time of year. It had been assumed that the ice edge would be much farther north.
One day bad weather was expected and the captain approached a small island Kolyuchin to seek shelter from the storm. Kolyuchin is known for the polar weather station that operated there in Soviet times. Although the station closed in 1992, the abandoned village still stands on the island.
The blustery wind and rain and the neglected buildings on the rocky shores made everything that happened feel surreal. Suddenly we noticed movement in the windows of the houses.
Someone pulled out binoculars and we saw polar bear heads. Fog, a long deserted place, polar bears – that was the perfect backdrop.
The bears walked around the houses and between barrels that were left on the island long ago. There were about 20 animals in sight at the same time, mostly males. The females kept to the side with their young, closer to the shore of the island. Barrels are a known problem in the Russian Arctic. In the days of the USSR, fuel was delivered to the station in them, but it was very expensive to take the barrels back, so they were just thrown away.
It was too dangerous to land on the island that day, so I took photos from a drone equipped with special low-noise propellers. I also used certain tricks that allowed me to shoot the animals without disturbing them. After a while, the bears practically ignored the unusual buzz.
I later asked one of Russia’s top polar bear experts, Anatoly Kochnev, what causes the animals’ behavior – why do they like to sit in buildings so much? The biologist, who worked for many years in Chukotka and on the island of Kolyukhin, told me that polar bears are very curious by nature and therefore always try to get through any unlocked window or door. And second, unfortunately, these animals are traditionally hunted and use these houses as protection from humans.
But then he told me something even more interesting. It turns out that bears are very rarely found in such numbers on the island. No one knows why, but every nine years the floating ice stays near shore during the summer. Consequently, the bears do not travel far north with the ice as usual and settle in the abandoned polar station. We saw evidence of this later when we encountered almost no bears on Wrangel Island to the north.
Although several months have passed since the expedition, I still sometimes see polar bears in broken windows in front of my eyes when I fall asleep. And looking at the main photograph in my life right now, the bears’ house, I think that sooner or later all man-made things on earth will cease to exist – buildings, cars and computers will all come to an end. But life is eternal. These bears will continue to hunt, swim among ice floes, and explore islands even when civilization ceases to exist. But life will last forever only when we humans finally start caring for the planet and the creatures that need our protection.
