Polar Bear Eats Seal in First Ever POV Video
June 20, 2014 - Scientists from USGS successfully attached cameras to four female polar bears in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, capturing footage from their point of view in the Arctic. The cameras were used to observe how the bears are responding to recent sea ice loss as well as to gain a better understanding of their daily activity.
Transcript
Anthony Pagano, Wildlife Research Biologist - United States Geological Survey
As polar bear scientists, we don't have that many opportunities to see polar bears out in their natural habitat. But we're trying to bring in more fine grained and detailed information about how polar bears are using these habitats.
You can see her swimming in the water and at one point you see a seal come into the picture. And she appears to be hunting, it's pretty neat to get the opportunity to see what these bears are seeing underwater and what type of activity is under there.
We put out these collars this past spring. We tried putting out two different cameras last year. And they designed these cameras specifically for use on polar bears on the sea ice. And so our main objective so far is to make sure that they actually worked and provided us useful data.
What was probably most exciting for me is just the fact that it was successful and we can start to look into all these different questions that we have and start to get a much better understanding of how these animals are using their habitat. But with declining sea ice what's not known is if they're able to catch seals when the sea ice declines or if they're trying to conserve their energy and minimize movement patterns. And so we want to get a better understanding of how those bears are differing both behaviorally and energetically. And what the potential implications of those might be.
