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Polar bear joins Lance research team

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Now that they’re finally back on solid ice, that other great natural menace in Svalbard is giving the Lance crew a hassle.
A polar bear vandalized equipment set up near the research ship that is frozen into the sea ice north of Spitsbegern, according to an entry this week in the expedition’s official blog (tinyurl.com/o43f7hg).

Lana Cohen, a researcher conducting atmospheric observations during the Norwegian Polar Institute project, noted the animal has been spotted near the ship during the past few days. But a day after researchers spent considerable time setting up an instrument on the ice, it became obvious more than humans were monitoring it.

“We were looking at an instrument, mounted on an arm that was supposed to be parallel to the ground, but which was now dipping down towards the snow at a perilous angle,” she wrote.

But while some expedition participants “were starting to make vows of vengeance (only mostly joking),” the bear was only guilty of what the researchers are doing.

“I envisioned the bear wondering what the heck is all this stuff and what is it doing here?” Cohen wrote.

The Lance, which is spending six months studying the sea ice “from cradle to grave,” was forced to relocate last week after being pushed southward out of the ice.

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
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