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Waldo Arms Hotel

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Photo Gallery

World class photography opportunities are out our front door.

polar bear, Ursus maritimus, silhouette at sunset on the pack ice, 1002 coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska

Over the last 14 years, I have been lucky enough to photograph more or less the same population of eastern Beaufort Sea polar bears and their new young that show up each year along the arctic coast of Alaska. This is one of my favorite images from 2012, a curious 400 plus lb. adolescent polar bear, Ursus maritimus, boar, taken off Bernard Spit from a skiff on the last day of fall freeze up using a 16 mm fisheye lens at the end of a camera pole. As it approached the skiff and put its paw out, my Inupiaq skiff driver started to back the boat away. What I feel is so striking about this image is that it gives a feeling of the animal reaching out to the viewer from a place where ice and sky almost seem to swirl around as one, and the light gently brings it all together – the sky, the ice, and the animal, in a grandiose pose of an animal that is still king of it’s environment. This population of bears is finding itself in a much more precarious situation during summer months due to large losses of sea ice in this part of the arctic ocean, and soon will face oil and gas development. Sea ice hit an all-time low in September 2012, covering only 24% of the Arctic Ocean, offsetting the previous low of 29% in 2007. Taken November 2012, autumn.

Polar bear (Ursus maritimus), pair of young subadult boars play with one another on newly formed pack ice during fall freeze up, along the eastern arctic coast of Alaska, Beaufort Sea

polar bear, Ursus maritimus, curious bear at a truck window, 1002 area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Alaska

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