On the smooth, flat surface of the sea ice, far to the north of Svalbard, one male polar bear ambles along with a lazy, rolling walk. Because of all the white ice and all the white fur, the bear's camouflage is about as good as it can be. Because the bear isn't white at all, the guard hairs of the bear's fur are clear and hollow and can scatter light, and the bear's skin is a light absorbing black color. It absorbs all the light and the tiny amount of sun that could possibly shine on the Arctic.

Scientists call him Ursus maritimus, sea bear, and he is the biggest of all the land carnivores. They can weigh between 300 and 800 kg and between 200 and 250 cm from nose to tail. The females are close to half the size of the males, weighing between 150 and 300 kg. It can be very obvious that the bears are sexually dimorphic when looking at the shapes of the head and shoulders. The sheet like shapes help makes the bears faster and better suited to the water as they are better at swimming than both the brown bear and the seal that they hunt.

One sea bear is hollow and transparent, providing him with a fur coat that insulates from the cold. Underneath, 11 cm of blubber layer, further insulated by dense undercoat. The claws are better suited for catching seals than digging roots. The paws are huge, as they can be 30 cm across, with a layer of fur that acts like a snowshoe. The largest land carnivores are classified as marine mammals, as they spend the entire year on ice-covered water and not on a land.

These peoples live the north pole between 5 countries: Canada, the U.S. (with Alaska), Greenland, Norway, and Russia. 19 subpopulations adapt their lives around the seasons and the shifts in sea ice, and some bears consume the winter in close proximity to shore-fast ice, while others take thousands of kilometers of travel, and drift to Siberia. In the summer, the ice platform melts, and bears are forced to make land and live mainly off fat reserves.

Bears use fat reserves while living off seal blubber. While bears use many different creative ways to hunt, the most common method is called 'still hunting', which involves careful observation and is hunting effort demanding and causes high waiting times for the bears. Seals believe it could be said, “There is anyways a hole'' in the ice, which is the area in the ice that a seal must make surface to access the atmosphere. There are many different ways to fill the nutritional gaps of seal blubber, such as Walrus and beluga carcasses, along with birds and eggs, however seal blubber is the most popular method.

Reproductive events coincide with the ice calendar. In polar bears, mating can be selectively timed. Although females will mate in the austral Spring, they will delay implantation of the fertilized eggs until Fall. Pregnancy is observed from early Fall until the early Winter months, during which females will dig a den for a maternity site. This site may be a snow drift on land, or a snow drift on a pack of ice that has become stable. Two cubs are typically born, each with an initial weight of less than one kilogram. The maternal bears of this species will lactate to the cubs with no energy being provided by the maternal bear as she neither eats nor drinks. This den will continue to be a site of no disturbance until the family descends back onto the surface in the early Spring.

In an environment this vast, bear populations are difficult to track with the International Union for Conservation of Nature estimating the population of polar bears to be between 22,000 and 31,000. The Southern Beaufort group is particularly threatened and with the sea ices of the region experiencing greater exposed lengths and durations, the group itself, along with the polar bear species as a whole, will continue to see declines.

Bears can live around 15 to 18 years in the wild with some living into their late 20s, while bears in captivity can live over 30 years. This is true in spite of their being highly active. In fact, bears can swim for many hours, run over 100 kilometers, and have a highly developed sense of smell to the extent that they can smell a seal from 1 kilometer away. This has earned bears great respect in the Inuit community as a part of their culture through stories, which categorizes the bear as a part of nimipuu, as a symbol of great respect that generates a great deal of caution.

As you watch this next male bear, he has stopped in a place of balance. He has no fear of the dark and has no fear as he watches the most powerful being that this world has, with no fear, and with great confidence, he has swum with the ice, seal, and the bear for over 120,000 years. The only difference to the bear is how long the platform holds each spring, as this bears no difference to the seal or the ice.