Churchill, Canada, and Svalbard, Norway – July 15, 2026 — Polar Bears International (PBI), the only nonprofit organization dedicated solely to polar bears and their environment, will host Arctic Sea Ice Day on July 15th, showcasing new bear-tracking innovations, research, and live chats with scientists. Polar Bears International created Arctic Sea Ice Day to raise awareness about the importance of sea ice for polar bears and our shared climate. The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet, making climate action and Arctic conservation more urgent than ever.
Launching its first Svalbard Polar Bear Tracker, Polar Bears International is giving people around the world a new window into the lives of polar bears in the High Arctic. Created in partnership with the Norwegian Polar Institute, the new tracker follows two Barents Sea polar bears around Svalbard, with location updates delayed to help protect the bears. The launch expands PBI’s live-tracking tools beyond Hudson Bay and offers a rare opportunity to see how polar bears move across one of the Arctic’s most dynamic sea ice landscapes.
The Svalbard tracker is part of PBI’s Arctic Sea Ice Day programming, which also includes the seasonal launch of the Beluga Whale Live Cams, with live scientist chats aboard the Beluga Boat starting July 15.
"On Arctic Sea Ice Day, we’re excited to connect with people around the world as we celebrate this special ecosystem and inspire conservation action to protect not just the polar bears, but the entire interconnected Arctic ecosystem. What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. Every fraction of a degree of warming matters, for polar bears, for Arctic wildlife, and for our shared global climate,” says Krista Wright, Polar Bears International Executive Director.
A Look Into the Lives of Polar Bears
Now anyone can follow Barents Sea polar bears in near-real time with the Svalbard Polar Bear Tracker. This builds on the success of PBI's Hudson Bay Polar Bear Tracker, which has been running for over a decade with the University of Alberta and Environment and Climate Change Canada. The Hudson Bay Polar Bear Tracker just got an upgrade, too, so you can now see an animation of the bears’ paths throughout the year. You can even find Hope, the polar bear mom who adopted a cub in autumn 2025, moving on the sea ice with her family.
"Polar bears' lives are intertwined with their sea ice habitat, and our new Svalbard Polar Bear Tracker will be a fascinating insight into these bears' movements and habits," says Alysa McCall, Director of Science at Polar Bears International. "Although this is our first Svalbard bear on the tracker, we expect a familiar story: as the sea ice moves, so do the polar bears."
“Polar bears create amazing tracks across the Arctic. Being able to follow the bears as they roam across vast areas of the Barents Sea, or decide to live more locally in Svalbard, is something we love to share with everyone interested in polar bears. The Norwegian Polar Institute is very happy to join forces with Polar Bears International to offer the global community a rare window into what our bears are doing, especially since outreach is a crucial part of polar bear science,” adds Dr. Jon Aars, Senior Researcher, Norwegian Polar Institute.
Polar Bears: More Than a Predator, Essential to the Ecosystem
New research out this year shows just how much the rest of the Arctic depends on polar bears. Because bears prefer blubber, which makes up to 80% of their diet, and don't save their kills, they leave roughly 30% of each kill behind; this provides an important food source for up to 20 other species, from Arctic foxes to gulls. Recent research found that a single bear provides, on average, more than 1,000 kg of marine mammal biomass to the wider ecosystem each year. As sea ice declines and hunting opportunities are reduced, less food moves through the food web that depends on it.
Polar bears' wide-ranging movements also make them important indicators for Arctic conservation planning. With home ranges from 300,000 km² in Western Hudson Bay to 400,000 km² in the Barents Sea, and with over 50 years of monitoring data available, polar bears can help inform the design of Arctic Marine Protected Areas. While the Arctic remains a remote, fairly inaccessible, and typically data-deficient area, we have decades of robust polar bear data. Researchers have laid out how polar bear data can inform the proposed Hudson Bay National Marine Conservation Area, a designation that would protect polar bears, belugas, and coastal communities together.
Where Bears and Belugas Meet
That overlap plays out every summer, where roughly 57,000 belugas migrate south into the shallow waters near the Churchill River estuary in Hudson Bay, the same shoreline where polar bears wait out the ice-free months.
PBI's Beluga Boat and live Beluga Cam, in collaboration with explore.org, go live for the season on July 15, offering above- and below-water views of the whales along with hydrophone audio that lets viewers hear their vocalizations.
The cam also powers the Beluga Bits Citizen Science Project. To date, more than 40,000 volunteers have logged over 10 million beluga photo classifications, helping scientists study a species that's otherwise difficult to observe in the wild. Past volunteers have even spotted two jellyfish species never before recorded in Hudson Bay.