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'Wally' the wandering walrus won't stop stealing people's boats. So now he's getting his own.

Buitengebieden/Twitter, Sailing Sv Caledonia/YouTube

Imagine you're out enjoying a nice float on a boat nowhere near the Arctic, when you spot a ginormous Arctic walrus hoisting himself out of the water and onto a boat nearby.

What do you do, besides pull out your camera and take a video?

That's Wally the walrus, as he's come to be known, and that boat is somewhere along the coast of the British Isles. The juvenile Arctic walrus was first spotted in March and has been seen along the coast of Western Europe as far south as Spain, according to the BBC, but appears to be making his way back north, hopefully to his home habitat. He's doing alright, but there's one problem: He's been making himself at home on people's boats along the way and, unsurprisingly considering his size, sinking some of them.

Walruses live much of their life swimming around in the water, but they need surfaces to rest on. Up in the Arctic, they'll lounge on floating pieces of ice, but down in the sea waters surrounding the British Isles, Wally keeps trying to park his massive self on sea vessels that don't belong to him.

According to the Irish Examiner, British Divers Marine Life Rescue (BDMLR) in the UK provided a floating pontoon for Wally during the six weeks he spent in the Isles of Scilly this summer. Now that he's hanging off the coast of Ireland, Seal Rescue Ireland (SRI) has secured an unused pontoon for Wally's use and scented it using towels from a boat that he'd recently utilized (and sunk).

SRI is working with other wildlife groups to try to help keep Wally safe as he makes his way back to wherever he came from.

"We have never done this before so there are lots of learnings as we go," SRI executive director Melanie Croce told the Irish Examiner.

"We would like to be able to let him to continue his natural behaviors but when word gets out about his location, a situation arises where we have to intervene.

"We only step in when human interactions with him threaten to disturb him. Our priority is the animal's welfare."

Boaters are asked to stay 100-500m away from Wally and not to publicly announce sighting locations until the designated floating vessel can be deployed for him.

Wally the walrus climbs on our boat in the isles of scillywww.youtube.com

Too many people congregating to see him could interfere with Wally's ability to go where he needs to go in addition to causing him unnecessary distress.

Wally has wandered thousands of miles and still has a long way to go if he's going to make it home. Poor Wally doesn't mean to be a nuisance—he just gets tuckered out and needs somewhere to lay his weary head.

Good for the wildlife protectors for figuring out a way to give the big guy a resting spot and for advising everyone to let Wally find his way without human interference.

Wally the Walrus tour of Europe continues (8) (Isles of Scilly) - ITV News - 6th July 2021www.youtube.com

Good luck, Wally. Hope you find your way home soon.

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Heroes

A scientist who has studied polar bears for 34 years is starting to get really worried.

Even after half a lifetime studying polar bears in some of Earth's least hospitable climates, Andrew Derocher still gets nervous trying to tag a 1,000-pound bear on a frozen slab of ice in the open water.

"[The bears] are not worried about being out there, but it’s just not good enough for us," he says.

Photo by Andrew Derocher.

To human researchers, sea ice may be a rickety death trap, but to polar bears, it's a little like a cross between a superhighway, a forest, and an old memory-foam mattress. It's the surface over which they travel, where they hunt, and occasionally, where they mate.

And increasingly, Derocher warns, there is less of it to go around:

"We can quibble amongst ourselves as scientists, but the overwhelming scientific consensus is absolutely clear: Polar bears are in trouble."

The ice that supports polar bear populations from Canada to Alaska to Russia to Norway is disappearing — rapidly.

Across the Arctic, the trouble signs are difficult to miss. The bears are getting smaller, they're reproducing less frequently, and very young and very old bears are dying at higher rates.

For the past two weeks, Derocher has been tweeting a series of alarming maps and images that illustrate what polar bears are up against.

Like this one that shows in dark red how much sea ice is missing:

And this one that shows the decline of sea ice coverage:

And this one that shows the decreasing number of days with sea ice per year:

Derocher and his colleagues at the University of Alberta use satellite radios to track the bears' movements.

Since the early 1980s, Derocher has studied thousands of bears over thousands of miles. Some of the bears he tracks today are the great-great-grandchildren of the bears he began his career working with.

By monitoring when the bears walk onto the ice and when they return to shore, they can estimate the number of "ice-free" days the bears will see that year. 180 "ice-free" days is considered a danger zone for the species.

"Once we get beyond about 210 days, we probably no longer have sufficient ice to maintain a viable population," Derocher explains.

In Canada's Western Hudson Bay, the no-ice period is hovering around 150-160 days — but, thanks to climate change, that number is jumping up by an average of three to six weeks per decade.

A few extra weeks without access to the ice can mean the difference between life and death for animals that burn up to two pounds of energy every day they're on land.

Less sea ice means the bears have to travel more, which means they have to kill more seals while they can. Since most of their hunting is done on the ice, that window becomes shorter the later the seas freeze — creating a conundrum wherein the bears have less time in which they're forced to hunt more efficiently and productively.

Derocher working on the ice. Photo by Andrew Derocher.

If they fail to hunt enough, their body fat stores won't last the length of the ice-free season. With lower body fat stored, female bears stop producing milk earlier, leading to higher cub mortality.

Derocher's prognosis for the arctic ambassador species is dire.

Within the next few decades, he estimates, there will be significantly fewer polar bears. By the end of the 21st century, there may be such a reduction in the species' range that future populations may or may not be viable.

"Every time we look at a new study, there’s pretty much no good news for polar bears," he says.

With current planetary warming trends, Derocher fears the decline is not reversible in the short term.

Long term, saving the species might mean making some sacrifices — financial, political, or otherwise.

"In our own house, we had to replace some windows, and we opted to pay the extra money for triple pane to save on energy," he says.

Any U.S. push to return to coal, he fears, would be a disaster for the species, although he does see some cause for optimism in recent business efforts to combat climate change.

Ultimately, he believes, polar bear fans simply need to understand what's going on if the species is going to continue surviving against heavy odds.

Photo by Andrew Derocher.

"There’s nothing in the scientific literature that supports anything but grave concern," he says.

The first step toward getting the bears back on track, he maintains, is getting the public to care about conserving sea ice.

The second is people "voting with their wallet" and rewarding companies that are reducing their carbon footprint.

The third is supporting politicians like those in his home province of Alberta who favor policies like higher carbon taxes — though he believes most could be doing much more.

That might be the species' best hope.

"It’s got to change," Derocher insists. "The way we live on this planet has got to change."

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Want to know what the North Pole is really like? We asked an Arctic researcher.

Photo by Vince Gx on Unsplash

A sunny day at the Saarland Glacier near the North Pole.

When Richard Krishfield began his career fixing office equipment, he had no idea it would take him to the ends of the Earth.

Then, in 1986, Krishfield, who had spent years working on computers and electronics for businesses, was asked down to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) in Massachusetts to work on one of their instruments — a conductivity, temperature, and depth (or CTD) device that collects data from its seat on the ocean floor.

It wasn't the work Krishfield was used to, but it offered an intriguing promise of adventure.

"I thought well, jeez, it might be kind of fun to work on ships and travel the world for a few years," Krishfield says over the phone. 35 years later, he's still doing it.

For over 85 years, the WHOI has been at the forefront of oceanographic study and innovation. Their scientists, engineers, and innovators routinely travel around the globe — from oil spill sites to exotic coastal shores to underwater volcanoes — collecting valuable data and learning how our world works.

Krishfield's work with the WHOI has brought him to some of the world's most extreme places, including the North Pole.

Unlike the iconic images of a massive, globe-spanning, elf-employing, gift-making, reindeer-housing operation run by a jolly man in a red suit, the real North Pole is home to navigators and researchers who brave some of the coldest weather on the planet in the name of science.

Living and working at the North Pole is an intense experience that takes a physical toll on those who venture out there.

Every year, Krishfield and his team spend months at a time camping out in the Arctic, setting up advanced observation instruments that send real-time data back to the WHOI. "Basically they’re sending back what you might consider the weather of the ocean," says Krishfield. And setting them up is no easy task.

"You’re living in a tent on the ice," says Krishfield. "And you don't have things like forklifts, so you have to muscle heavy equipment on and off small airplanes." Those airplanes land on makeshift runways that are cleared out by workers, too. In order for the ice to be thick enough to land a plane on, most of the work has to happen when it's as cold as possible.

"You have to get acclimated to the minus-20 or minus-30 degree temperatures and dress appropriately and know what to do," Krishfield says.

Over his 35-year career, Krishfield has seen firsthand just how much the Arctic is changing.

"Obviously the ice is melting," he says. "And in the 30 years I’ve been going up there, it's very clear how much."

One of the instruments Krishfield has helped set up is a buoy that sits on ice floes and dangles sensors into the water below to measure temperature, salinity, and current velocity of the ocean. When he first started installing them, he and his team would look for ice floes that were up to 4 meters thick.

"Then after a couple years we were looking for 2- to 3-meter floes," says Krishfield. "Then we were looking for 1-and-ahalf to 1-meter floes, and then this last summer, we were out there, and there was hardly any thick ice at all."

Greenland, research, global warming, Arctic, human footprint

Photo taken from a plane over the Jacobshavn Glacier Front in Ilulissat, Greenland

Image via U.S. Department of State/Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, Krishfield and the scientific community have been reporting shrinking ice in the Arctic for a long time. Studies confirmed long ago that the Arctic is warming, that the ice is melting, and just how catastrophic the result of that could be for the Earth's climate and ecosystems.

If the Arctic becomes a seasonal ice cap (where ice melts during the summer and refreezes during the winter), it could throw the planet's weather systems into utter chaos. Scientists estimate that could be the case by 2050.

"Probably sooner than that," says Krishfield.

You don't need to look at satellite data to see how much the Arctic has changed, Krishfield says.

"I look back and think of all the trips we used to do back in the summertime ... it was really beautiful out there," he recalls. "It’d be bright and sunny, and it was just beautiful."

"Now that the ice has melted away quite a bit, what you end up having is very grey, dull, dreary, and sort of foggy days out there. So the whole climate of it has changed."

It's hard to imagine that human beings could have any effect on the North Pole — as far away from it as we are — but we can and we do.

Arctic sea ice loss has been directly linked to carbon emissions, and saving the Arctic is a matter of cutting down those emissions quickly and dramatically. The North Pole is so extreme and so far away that we hardly ever think about it — let alone wrestle with the true global impact of what would happen if we let it melt. Odds are, the North Pole only comes up in conversation around Christmas — and not exactly in a "lets save the Arctic ice cap" context.

If you find hope in one thing though, consider the fact that human beings really can have an impact on the Arctic, for worse — or for better. Our actions have brought the Arctic Ocean to the brink, but it's the actions we take next, along with the hard work of scientists and researchers like Krishfield, that save it.

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These photos won a National Geographic contest, and they're breathtaking.

For over 120 years, National Geographic has brought the world to your doorstep.

The iconic magazine, TV channel, and brand has built their name showcasing the planet's most beautiful and exotic places in writing and photography.

Every single month, the glossy, high-resolution pages of National Geographic are filled with some of the best photography in the world.

They also hold an annual photography contest, open to amateurs and people outside of Nat Geo's employ. It's a chance for photographers all over the world to showcase their work.

The 2016 winners of the National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year contest were announced in July.

As you can imagine, they are breathtaking:

"Winter Horseman" by Anthony Lau (Mongolia)

Grand prize winner. All images courtesy of National Geographic.

"The winter in Inner Mongolia is very unforgiving," writes photographer Anthony Lau. "At a freezing temperature of minus twenty and lower, with a constant breeze of snow from all direction, it was pretty hard to convince myself to get out of the car and take photos."

"Wherever You Go, I Will Follow" by Hiroki Inoue (Japan)

"Nature" first place winner.

"It was the time of day immediately following sunset. I heard a voice. 'Wherever you go, I will follow you' the voice says." — Photographer Hiroki Inoue.

"Ben Youssef" by Takashi Nakagawa (Morocco)

"Cities" first place winner.

"Even though there were a lot of people in Ben Youssef, still here was more quiet and relaxing compare to the street outside in Marrakesh," wrote Takashi Nakagawa. "I was waiting for the perfect timing to photograph for long time."

"Rooftop Dreams, Varanasi" by Yasmin Mund (India)

"People" second place winner.

"I arrived at my guest house in Varanasi at 5:30am," wrote Yasmin Mund. "I instinctively climbed the 7 sets of stairs to the rooftop (which happened to be the highest in the vicinity) to see the sunrise over the famous Ganges River. As the sun was rising I looked over the right hand side of the balcony and my jaw dropped with disbelief."

"Double Trapping" by Massimiliano Bencivenni (Brazil)

"Nature" second place winner.

"I was in the Brazilian Pantanal along the Rio Negrinho," wrote Massimiliano Bencivenni. "I realized that the river, at certain points of the loops, created places where there were many yacare caimans. I saw a yacare sink suddenly, and I immediately looked for the best location to photograph when it resurfaced. The whole thing lasted only a fraction of a moment."

"Silenced" by Wing Ka H. (China)

"Cities" second place winner.

"This photo was taken on my last trip to Guangzhou, China," wrote Wing Ka H. "This place is the school dormitories of South China Normal University. When I was hanging around, most of them were taking a break. After lunchtime, they needed to go back to study."

"Remote Life" by Mattia Passarini (India)


"People" third place winner.

This woman is carrying a log to warm up her home in the remote village of Himachal Pradesh.

"Lagunas Baltinache" by Victor Lima (Chile)

"Nature" third place winner.

"I embarked alone on this adventure to find images not yet published of the most arid desert in the world and its contrasts," wrote photographer Victor Lima. "Despite the Atacama Desert being one of the best places on the planet to do night photography, in my prior research I discovered that there were not many night photos in the main tourist destinations there."

"Celestial Reverie" by Jeremy Tan (Malaysia)

"Cities" third place winner.

"Lightning seemingly strikes Komtar Tower, the most iconic landmark of George Town, capital of Penang state in Malaysia, during a thunderstorm. It is symbolic of the rejuvenation that the city, famous for a unique blend of centuries-old buildings and modern structures, has enjoyed in recent years." — Photographer Jeremy Tan.

"Muscle Beach Gym" by Dotan Saguy (USA)

"People" honorable mention.

The iconic Muscle Beach Gym in Venice Beach, California.

"Bears on a Berg" by John Rollins (Canadian Arctic)

"Nature" honorable mention.

"To me, the relative smallness of these large creatures when compared to the immensity of the iceberg in the photo represents the precariousness of the polar bear's reliance on the sea and sea ice for its existence," wrote John Rollins.

"Divide" by Kathleen Dolmatch (USA)

"Cities" honorable mention.

"From a doorless helicopter looking south on Central Park West, dividing the architecture and Central Park," wrote Kathleen Dolmatch. "The flight was my birthday gift."

It probably seems like there's a lot of ugliness in the world lately.

Terrorist attacks, shootings, political drama — it's exhausting.

But it's nice to be reminded that there's always beauty in the world, and sometimes it takes a keen, highly trained eye to find it.

Photographers often have to wait around for hours or days to capture images like these. They have to climb on roofs or get in helicopters or put themselves in dangerous spots just to grab a single moment of the world's intense and fleeting beauty.

When they do, it's so worth it. Because we all get to enjoy it.

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