Polar bear travelling on sea ice

This bear is travelling and hunting in the way polar bears are supposed to. Over a hundred miles from land, with nothing but floating ice filling the ocean it lives a complete life, taking advantage of the abundant calories available in the blubber of Harp, Ringed, Hooded and Bearded seals. 

It can be intuitive to see these animals as visitors in this environment, but it is very much their home. A bear tagged with a GPS transmitter recently in Svalbard spent two continuous days swimming on a journey to Franz Josef Land and beyond. So well insulated are they that they can stop and sleep almost anywhere, the moment the whim takes them. Eating, sleeping and travelling entirely at sea ,with very few limits on where they can go, they are paragons of self-sufficiency.

Equally at home walking on sea ice, swimming in the water or clambering over icebergs, they are classified as marine mammals in many countries. Everything they need can be found on the ice, even denning sites in the case of the subpopulation north of Alaska.

However, closely related to Brown bears, they remain extremely adaptable and are willing and able to come ashore in order to feed, den or just wait for the expanding ice of winter to come back so that they can go home again.