Watching bears in the sea allows you to get close safely.


Two large males swimming together is an unusual sighting. We are 50 miles up the coast in the Lazy Bear boat again.


In spite of shirt-sleeve warmth in Churchill, the air up here is chilled by the bits of ice still floating in the bay. Te sun is shining and the warm onesies are welcome. After traveling at top speed across the calm water, eagle-eyed Wally an- nounces a bear sighting off the point straight ahead. Gradu- ally, a bear takes shape. Binoculars come up. Cameras click. Te bear ambles off out of sight. Wally moves the boat away from shore and suddenly there is another sighting: two very large males swimming in the water nearby. It is unusual to see two male polar bears to- gether like this, says Wally. From the boat, we can see these massive animals close up. We can hear their huffing as they swim past us at a speed


50 • Fall 2016


Bear sighting from the boat.


of 10 km/h. Compare that to the record breaking swim of Mark Spitz at 8.1 km/h and you get some idea of the power of these beasts. It’s July — an ideal time to spot bears as they come off the


ice, fat and sleek, for their summer holidays on land where they will live on their fat until the ice forms and lets them go seal hunting again. Polar bears do hunt during the summer months in the tidal pools that sometimes contain stranded seals and whales, but this is a maintenance diet at best. Te media have done a great job touting the fall season, but there are just as many sightings in summer and the Lazy Bear’s big boat allows us to visit them in their natural ele- ment — the sea. Here, there is little chance of being at- tacked and you can get close to them in the water.


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