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USA: “The water bear”. Paul took his Zodiac boat to Hudson Bay, Canada, in midsummer. He scouted for three days before he spotted a bear, this young female, on sea ice some 30 miles offshore. “I approached her very, very slowly”, he says, “and then drifted. It was a cat-and-mouse game”. When the bear slipped into the water, he just waited. “There was just a flat, world of water and ice and this polar bear swimming lazily around me. I could hear her slow, regular breathing as she watched me below the surface or the exhalation as she surfaced, increasingly curious. It was very special”. The light was also special, but for a sinister reason. The midnight sun was filtered through smoke from forest fires raging farther south, a symptom of the warming Arctic – the greatest threat facing the polar bear. As more and more sea ice melts earlier and earlier every spring, it becomes harder for the bears to hunt the seals they depend on. (Photo by Paul Souders/Wildlife Photographer of the Year)
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