Polar bear gathering on Hopen

The days bet­ween Christ­mas and New Year´s Day the crew of the Nor­we­gi­an wea­ther sta­ti­on on the remo­te island Hopen was visi­ted by an excep­tio­nal­ly high num­ber of polar bears. On sin­gle days up to six polar bears were con­ve­ned around the small group of hou­ses, as the station´s cook, Bjørn Ove Fins­eth, reports on the station´s offi­ci­al web­site. Among them the­re was also a mother tog­e­ther with its two 2-years old cubs. They found a com­for­ta­ble place to rest on the sta­ti­ons heli­c­op­ter landing place. As mem­bers of the crew have to lea­ve their shel­te­ring quar­ters con­stant­ly for meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal mea­su­res they were forced to cha­se the bears away again and again. As Fins­eth sug­gests, this was the reason for some busy days bet­ween the years. For­t­u­na­te­ly the­re was never a cri­ti­cal situa­ti­on neither for humans nor ani­mals.

The small, stre­ched island Hopen belongs to Sval­bard. It is loca­ted in the far sou­the­ast of the archi­pe­la­go. Sin­ce 1945 the Nor­we­gi­ans ope­ra­te a meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal sta­ti­on the­re. Curr­ent­ly the sta­ti­on is run by a crew of four per­sons during win­ter­ti­me. Hopen is one of the bree­ding places for polar bears in Sval­bard.

Source: web­site of the meteo­ro­lo­gi­cal sta­ti­on on Hopen

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