Gyrfalcons are the world’s largest and most powerful falcons.  Yet even for them, the pressure is on.  Last summer this pair’s two chicks died of starvation.  Will the conditions be right this summer?  Will their best efforts be enough to keep this year’s chicks healthy?  Filmed in HD from a ledge adjacent to the nesting site, White Falcon, White Wolf provides an intimate portrait of this magnificent species.

Meanwhile, the pack of Arctic wolves wait with great anticipation for a sign that new pups have been born to their breeding female, who has spent a great deal of time in her den. When the pups arrive, the young wolf daughter will need to grow up. For now, however, she tends to let her curiosity get the best of her. Musk ox, snowy owls, Arctic hares and Arctic foxes round out the cast, as they too try to make the most of the precious Arctic summer. Buy the DVD. The film premiered October 26, 2008.

Follow as he travels to a remote Canadian outpost on Hudson Bay, where he investigates the annual invasion of hungry polar bears.

Churchill, in the Canadian province of Manitoba, occupies a spit of land that provides the fastest access onto the ice, and the bears are in no mood for any detours once the waters of Hudson Bay begin to freeze. So they congregate near the town and prowl the landscape for appetizers before the main course becomes accessible.

Ewan McGregor puts himself in the middle of the action as town and wildlife authorities skillfully cope with both the would-be marauders of the furry variety, and the throngs of tourists who descend upon the town to see the bears, often at considerable risk to themselves.

Along with McGregor, viewers get a close-up look at how polar bears that wander into town are sedated, carted off to polar bear “jail,” and eventually hoisted by helicopter onto the frozen bay. It’s a dramatic reversal from years ago, when bears invading human space often were shot, sometimes after lethal encounters with people.

Online content for The Polar Bears of Churchill with Ewan McGregor was originally posted May 2002.

Wayde Roberts is a Natural Resource Officer at Manitoba Conservation in Canada. He’s been working with polar bears for more than 10 years and in 2002 spoke to NATURE Online about his work in Churchill, known to many as the polar bear capital of the world.

What brought you to this line of work?

My family all did bush-related work, and I’ve wanted to do this kind of work ever since I was a kid. I grew up in the province of Manitoba and did a stint in Churchill working with Manitoba Conservation beginning in 1987, working for four or five straight seasons. I left the north and then returned, as an officer in Churchill, in 1996 to work with the polar bears. Basically, I’ve seen the abuse to the environment that goes on and have always felt like I’d do better by protecting natural resources than by using them.

Describe a typical day in polar bear conservation.

In typical town patrol, I’m up at daylight and patrolling with four other colleagues. There’s a control zone that’s set up, which is basically a border around the town of Churchill. If any bears pass through it, we try to capture them. When the bears move around a lot, we get very busy and may handle 12 to 14 bears before noon on any given day. Obviously, the idea is to create and maintain a separation between the bears and humans.

Wayde Roberts

Wayde Roberts

When we need to capture them, we set up a snare line, usually at the perimeter of the town dump, a place that has a lot of attractants for the bears. Then, we’ll trap them in a Culver Trap, or free-range them, meaning we’ll dart them with a tranquilizer gun. Once they’re drugged, we can keep as many as 22 bears in our holding facility before flying them north.

Have you ever had an unexpected run-in with an angry polar bear in which you felt you were in danger?

Once, when I was inside the bear-holding facility, I turned around and there was a polar bear 15 inches from me. There were a few scary moments before it ran away.

What should people do if they unexpectedly run into a polar bear — besides call you?

Well, the people in Churchill are very good and very helpful. We have a 24-hour-a-day Polar Bear alert line, which people can call to report bears that are inside the control zone. There’s a lot of education that we do, giving talks in schools and such, to try to give people the kind of information that will prevent them from getting into trouble. For example, leaving garbage out unsealed is one of the most dangerous things you can do; garbage is a natural attractant for the bears.

How do you tag the bears and what’s the purpose of doing so?

Once we tranquilize the bears, we tag their ears and give them lip tattoos with unique numbers to identify them. We’ll take a sample for DNA analysis, give them antibiotics if they have any cuts to prevent infection, and record their age if known. If we don’t know the age, we can extract a pre-molar, which the bear doesn’t need, to determine the age. With all this information, we create a “Bear Bible” for each animal. The Canadian federal government keeps all of this in a database, so we can track any individual bear’s progress from season to season.

Polar bears seem to be solitary animals. Do they not adhere to traditional family structures?

They are social animals up to a certain age, especially when you’re dealing with a mother and her young cubs, which is a dangerous kind of group to be around. Other than that, they are quite solitary.

According to some reports, the Earth’s average temperature may rise 3-5 degrees in the next 50 years, meaning the bears will have to fast for even longer before the ice freezes and they can return to hunt for food. What do you think the long-term effects will be?

As the temperature increases, the bears will have to adapt. Basically, first what may happen is that the seal population will decrease. When this vital food source is depleted, the bears will have less to feed on. Currently, though, Hudson Bay has a very healthy bear population that numbers approximately 1,200. It’s a unique population in that it’s one of the only bear populations that fast on land — they’re basically engaged in walking hibernation. The long-term effects may jeopardize the population of the great bears.

Do you think that humans and bears can continue to live harmoniously in such proximity to one another?

Oh, definitely. In fact, the mortality rate for bears because of bear-human interactions is down significantly. Now we average one bear death a year, whereas years ago, it was closer to seven bears annually. And just as importantly, from the human perspective, we have not had a bear-related human fatality since 1986. So, bears are not hurting people and people have not been hurting the bears.

Herring eggs laid during the mass spawning.

Herring eggs laid during the mass spawning. To make LIFE AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA, veteran British filmmaker Rodger Jackman had to figure out how to work amid the pounding waves, howling winds, and harsh weather that are the hallmark of British Columbia’s Bamfield Marine Station, headquarters of the production. “I knew it was going to be tough,” Jackman says. “You simply can’t take delicate cameras out into 20-foot waves that can deliver the force of a car driving into a brick wall at 90 miles per hour.”

In addition, Jackman notes, divers carrying cameras are often unable to approach many animals without scaring them off or dramatically changing their behavior — a major problem for a filmmaker interested in capturing a creature’s natural habits. So, to put his starring actors in a comfortable situation where they could be easily filmed, Jackman constructed an elaborate set of aquaria in a makeshift studio: the marine station’s boat shed. The largest, which was 10 feet deep and four feet wide, required more than a ton of sand and rocks and took about three days to build and stock with animals. “If you set up and maintain the tanks properly,” he says, “many animals will go about their business quite naturally.”

Most importantly, Jackman believes that working in a studio situation allows filmmakers to capture scenes that would be virtually impossible to record in the wild. For instance, a dramatic sequence in LIFE AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA shows immense schools of herring spawning in coastal waters, which become milky from the billions of eggs and sperm. “Once the spawning started, the water was so milky you literally couldn’t see the fish unless they swam up against the lens,” he remembers.

Nudibranchs live among the kelp forests.

“So to complement the wild footage,” Jackman continues, “we put a relatively small school of fish in the big tank and then, when they started to spawn at about four in the morning, filmed them until they made even that tank too milky to see.” Using the aquaria, Jackman’s team was also able to capture the gracefully arcing jets of sperm and eggs released by sea urchins and the equally captivating mating habits of barnacles. Over the course of two years, the film was assembled by quilting intimate scenes together with footage that could be captured only in the wild, such as a 9-foot-long giant octopus snagging a crab in its tentacles and ghostly, soft-bodied nudibranchs drifting from kelp stalks.

Producer: Ronnie Godeanu
Art Director: Sabina Daley
Writer: David Malakoff
Graphic Art: Lenny Drozner
Technical Director: Brian Lee
Scientific Consultant: Gianna Savoie

Thirteen Online is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York’s Kravis Multimedia Education Center in New York City. Anthony Chapman, Director of Interactive & Broadband. Carmen DiRienzo, Vice President and Managing Director, Corporate Affairs.

© 1998 Thirteen/WNET New York

All Rights Reserved

Television Credits

A Rodger Jackman Production for Thirteen/WNET New York and BBC-TV

Funder Credits

Funding for the TV series NATURE is made possible in part by Park Foundation. Major corporate support is provided by Canon U.S.A., Inc., Ford Motor Company, and TIAA-CREF. Additional support is provided by the nation’s public television stations.

We recommend these Web sites for those interested in the subjects shown on the program. All links are valid as of December 28, 2000.

By the Sea
http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/canwaters-eauxcan/bbb-lgb/school-ecole/activities/index_e.asp#lessons
An introduction to 11 ecosystems within the coastal zone of Eastern Canada.

Cabrillo Marine Aquarium
http://www.cabrilloaq.org/
A Los Angeles area aquarium has an event calendar and educational activities for kids.

Bamfield Marine Station
http://www.bms.bc.ca/
General information about the station where LIFE AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA was filmed.

British Columbia Creature Page
http://www3.bc.sympatico.ca/kerryw/creature/creat.htm
A guide to aquatic animals.

Seaweb
http://www.seaweb.org/
Links to ocean advocacy and educational groups and a calendar for 1998, the Year of the Ocean.

Print Resources

For those interested in the subjects shown in LIFE AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA, we recommend the following books.

Chinery, Michael, Wayne Ford, Mick Loates, and Myke Taylor. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS ABOUT SEASHORE ANIMALS. New York: Kingfisher Books, 1994.

Carwardine. Mark. SEE & EXPLORE: WHALES, DOLPHINS, AND PORPOISES. New York: DK Publishing, 1992.

Cooper, Ann, and Dorothy Emerling. WILD WONDERS: ALONG THE SEASHORE. Roberts Rinehart Publishing, 1997.

Ganeri, Anita. THE OCEANS ATLAS. New York: DK Publishing, 1994.

Gunzi, Christiane. LOOK CLOSER: TIDE POOL. New York: DK Publishing, 1998.

Little, Colin, and J. A. Kitching. THE BIOLOGY OF ROCKY SHORES. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Ricketts, Edward Flanders. BETWEEN PACIFIC TIDES. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992.

Silver, Donald M., and Patricia J. Wynne. ONE SMALL SQUARE: SEASHORE. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997.

Snively, Gloria. EXPLORING THE SEASHORE IN BRITISH COLUMBIA, WASHINGTON AND OREGON. Gordon Soules Book Publishing, 1983.

Steele, Philip. SEE & EXPLORE: SHARKS AND OTHER MONSTERS OF THE DEEP. New York: DK Publishing, 1998.

Wareham, Bill. BRITISH COLUMBIA WILDLIFE VIEWING GUIDES. Falcon Publishing Company, 1994.

Wertheim, Anne. THE INTERTIDAL WILDERNESS. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1984.

Where the sea meets the land, life is abundant.

Where the sea meets the land, life is abundant. More than half of the world’s human population lives within a few dozen miles of a coastline, and many other land animals often find their way to the continental margins as well. In LIFE AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA, bears can be seen wandering the rocky coast, scooping up small crabs. The nipping crustaceans provide a nutritious addition to the bear’s diet, particularly early in the year when fruits and berries are not yet plentiful. Mink also poke around the tide pools looking for treats.

It is birds, however, that have developed the most acrobatic style of preying on seafood. In a kind of take-out dining, crows and gulls will pick up tough-shelled clams, mussels, or crabs in their beaks and carry them high into the air, then drop them, like bombs, to shatter onto the rocks below.

These bombardiers need to be careful, however: they must go high enough to ensure that the plummet breaks the shell, but not so high that another bird can steal their meal. Such thieves are everywhere along the coast: even the majestic bald eagle often bullies other fish-eating birds into dropping their catch in order to scoop it up for themselves. These encounters only add to the constant turmoil that makes life where the ocean meets the land so captivating. Like a wave that crests, sinks, and then builds again, the edge of the sea constantly replenishes itself, creating new and endlessly enthralling patterns.

Sea urchins and a sea star. Imagine waking up in the morning submerged in freezing water, spending your afternoon baking beneath a merciless sun, and ending the day battered by 10-foot waves that smash into you with the force of a hundred hammer blows — all the while fending off attacks from neighbors intent on making you their next meal. Such is the challenging everyday life of the remarkable creatures featured in the NATURE program LIFE AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA. This film, which took two years to create, is a vivid portrait of life — and death — in the tide pools and bays along Canada’s rugged Pacific coast.

Researchers have long marveled at the life that flourishes in the narrow band where the sea flings itself against the edge of the continent. Mussels, barnacles, and anemones carpet rocks and sand flats, crabs hide under every stone, and fish and sea stars lurk in forests of kelp and sea grass, eager for a meal. But amidst pounding waves and powerful tides, these plants and animals must find a way to hang on — or risk being tossed high onto the beach or swept out to sea. Those that find footholds are rewarded with a daily feast of food and oxygen, delivered by the rising tide.

When the tide recedes, however, the feast may be followed by famine and danger: without their protective blanket of water, residents of the tidal zone are exposed to extreme conditions, from summer’s broiling sun to winter’s freezing winds.

A barnacle in the midst of feeding. They also become vulnerable to land-based invaders: there is no way to predict when a bird, bear, or mink might emerge from its forest home looking for a convenient seafood snack.

Indeed, the tide, which comes in and goes out twice a day, is one of the few predictable events in an otherwise chaotic world, providing an underlying rhythm to life along the shore. However, unless we stare unwaveringly at the shore for hours, the tide creeps in and out too gradually for us to notice. But by using time-lapse photography, which compresses hours or days of action into just a few minutes, the filmmakers who created LIFE AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA were able to capture the subtle beauty of the flowing tide in several stunning sequences. Documenting the ocean’s slow ebb and flow was no easy task, says Rodger Jackman, the veteran British filmmaker who produced the film: it took more than a dozen tries to get the right combination of light and weather.

Despite their difficulty, however, time-lapse techniques also allowed Jackman and his team to capture sights usually visible only to the most patient observer. In two sequences, for example, events that take hours to occur in nature are compressed into the space of a few seconds: a mussel puts forth the strong, web-like threads that anchor it to the ocean floor, and a single flower-like sea anemone elegantly divides into two perfect clones. Other anemones — which, despite their plant-like appearance, are animals — are shown fighting a territorial battle.

Though slow, the fight is vicious, as the combatants stab at each other with tiny, venom-filled harpoons. In another segment, a predatory sea star pursues a fleeing hat-shaped mollusk called a limpet in a chase that moves at a glacially slow pace, yet manages to keep viewers on the edge of their seats. Though the limpet does not escape its relentless predator, other seashore animals use ingenious ways of foiling their attackers. When pursued by a hungry rock crab, a hermit crab simply climbs out of its shell, trading its home for its life. A keyhole limpet rents out space on its shell to a helpful companion, a small worm that darts out to charge the feet of a threatening sea star to drive it away. A solitary deep-water anemone literally dances away from an approaching sea star, tearing itself from the ocean floor and launching itself off with a deep bow and a twist, soaring away from the luckless star.

To order a copy of Life at the Edge of the Sea, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Life at the Edge of the Sea was originally posted December 1998.