ALASKA


‘inevitability’. An inevitability of polar bears. Elsewhere in the Arctic, spotting the planet’s largest land predator can be a bit of a lottery, requiring binoculars and considerable luck. Here, on Barter Island, off the north coast of Alaska, neither are required. I’m heading out into a cold Arctic


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aſternoon with Riley Barnes, a New Yorker ordinarily employed as a stuntman on features as varied as Avengers: Endgame and The Marvellous Mrs Maisel. While between projects, the 27-year-old heard about “wild work” skippering boats and searching for polar bears for Kaktovik Arctic Tours, so decided to swap one uncommon job for another. This meant relocating to the frigid Alaskan coast known as the North Slope. We’re not even 10 minutes out of


Kaktovik’s rudimentary harbour before we’ve seen a cautious mother with two young cubs, the larger one at the front, a younger, smaller sibling scurrying behind like it’s forgotten its schoolbag. The adult sits down on the brownish sand, immediately sullying her pristine white coat, then, in a moment of uncanny tenderness, lets the youngsters in to suckle.


92 nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel


he poetic collective noun for polar bears is an ‘aurora’, but around the community of Kaktovik they may be more accurately described as an


An hour later, the gentle perfection of this


scene is forgotten when we see two males in the water, grappling with each other with the fury of drunk berserkers. “They’re just playing,” says Riley, and I believe him, but if this roughhousing happened to almost any other species, there’d be nothing leſt aſterwards but fleshy spaghetti. Riley says that in the weeks he’s been


working here, the number of polar bears has varied from day to day, but he’s never failed to find at least a few. Their residence here over the summer months is partly due to man: Kaktovik’s Native Iñupiat population is permitted to kill three bowhead whales a year. Having done this, they then flense their huge carcasses on the edge of town, before distributing the meat equally among the community; what remains — dragged to nearby sandbars — belongs to the bears. These free meals have attracted Ursus


maritimus in numbers for generations; so many, in fact, that on the flight here from Fairbanks, in central Alaska, I mistakenly thought I was seeing sheep ambling along the dark shores. With food abundant, the bears appear as placid as specialist serial killers can be, showing little interest in conflict or murder. For outsiders, including myself, the


immersion into Iñupiat culture requires rapid adjustment. Take, for example, the


CLOCKWISE: Bruce Inglangasak keeps an eye on nearby polar bears while skippering his boat; a typically rudimentary home in Kaktovik, on Barter Island; with webbed paws and insulated fur, polar bears are adept swimmers — their Latin name means ‘sea bear’ PREVIOUS PAGE: A mother with cub on a barrier island outside Kaktovik


IMAGES: JAMIE LAFFERTY


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