The Great Polar Bear Feast

The bone pile has been stripped bare. And with little to no food left, the bears head towards Kaktovic to scavenge for food under the cover of darkness. Residents start up night patrols to keep the bears out of town.

Every year, up to eighty polar bears gather on the frozen shores of Barter Island, near the village of Kaktovik, to feast on the hunter-harvested bowhead whale remains. This extraordinary gathering not only highly unusual, it turns dangerous as the whale bones are picked bare, and the huge group of polar bears heads for the town.

Polar Bears and the Kaktovic community both feast on the Bowhead Whale. But the normally solitary bears must navigate a complex social scene as more than 80 now gather for the feed.

Dr. Todd Atkins and his team from the U.S.G.S. are studying the rapid environmental change in the Southern Beaufort Sea, and its correlation to the declining health of the polar bear population of the area.