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Anywhere to go?

In 2002, researchers aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Icebreaker Healy in the Bering Sea saw this polar bear swimming far from any ice. WHOI biologist Hal Caswell and colleagues have predicted that some populations of polar bears may be at serious risk from Arctic warming. Another WHOI biologist, Carin Ashjian, is currently leading a cruise aboard Healy to the Bering Sea to study the Arctic Ocean ecosystem and food web in a time of climate change, a multi-year effort. You can see slides, sounds, and dispatches from the cruise as it takes place on the WHOI Polar Discovery site.
(Photo by Mary Carman, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)