Customer Reviews

On Thin Ice: The Changing World of the Polar Bear

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Ellis, a writer, artist, and conservationist mainly known for his work on matters maritime, here turns his attention to Ursus maritimus. The polar bear is the largest modern land predator, albeit one that spends significant time in the water and depends on the marine food web.
The book is, not surprisingly, a very good one. It has Ellis' trademarks of thorough research (there is a typical Ellis bibliography, running 26 pages) and good writing. My favorite turn of phrase comes when, after reviewing how all sorts of polar bear parts are used for decoration and so on following legal hunts in Greenland, the author remarks, "In other words, nothing is wasted except the bear."
This book is a superb introduction to the polar bear, its world, and its interaction with humans. I had a pretty good idea from other reading how remarkable this animal and its adaptations are, but a lot of the bear-human history surprised me. For example, I had no idea anyone had, or could, or would want to, train a polar bear team to pull a sled.
The most surprising thing for me, though, was how numerous the animals must have been centuries ago. Early European explorers didn't just see the occasional bear: they saw dozens, or, over a season, sometimes hundreds. I asked Richard if anyone knew the species' population before Europeans entered its realm. It may have approached twice today's estimate of around 22,000, but he cautioned there was no reliable number. All that's certain is that hunting and indiscriminate killing removed many thousands.
Ellis seems to have read every account by explorers, whalers, and everyone else who ever saw a polar bear. The bear's behavior is explored in depth, and some myths rejected. An excellent chapter explores why humans are so darn fascinated with the polar bear, along with the contradiction between our love for the adorable cubs vs. our historic willingness to kill adults even when there is no need to.
Then we get to the threatened status of the bear today. The species still numbers many thousands, and is not actually going to disappear anytime soon. However, there is no question that, as Ellis documents, climate change will affect polar bears more quickly and more severely than it will most species.
A side note is that, in an unaired portion of a 2008 interview I did for the series MonsterQuest, I hypothesized that declining ice to the north and more human development to the south would push brown bear and polar populations together, resulting in more "pizzly" hybrids. I tossed that off the top of my head at the time: I didn't realize that, as Ellis shows, more qualified people have advanced the same idea. A hybrid shot in 2006 is the first proven example of a cross occurring in the wild, but it likely won't be the last.
When Ellis discusses climate change, the reader gets the impression that it's a simple case of sometimes-hyperbolic but pure-hearted environmentalists vs. totally evil corporations and Republicans. I'm not about to defend the Bush environmental record, but there are debates about everything from the conflicting estimates of warming to the tradeoffs (never mentioned here) in outlawing oil and gas development in northern regions, and Ellis could have acknowledged that these subjects are complex even as he makes a persuasive case for action.
Summary: If the polar bear has an official biographer, it is Ellis. It's the same role Ellis played in his outstanding books about the great white shark and the giant squid. The result is a tome everyone with an interest in nature, bears, or the environment should read.
- Matt Bille, author, Shadows of Existence: Discoveries and Speculations in Zoology (Hancock, 2006) ([...])

I haven't read this book, but I thought I should correct this. A commenter below says that portions of this book were taken from a Wikipedia article. I suspect it's the other way around. Parts of this book were published as an article in early 2008 it looks like, and presumably Wikipedia used that article as a source.

Matthew A. Bille, the first review of this great book here on Amazon, Amazon's editorial material, and "The New York Times" have all furnished an enormous amount of information about Ellis's study of the polar bear.

Ellis himself seems to have read everything ever written about the animal and man's interaction with it.

I have nothing of significance to add, except to praise the fair handed reviews of the book and Ellis for his informative contribution to my understanding of these fantastic animals.

However, this sentence has stuck in my memory ever since I finished reading the book:

"On ice, on land or in the water, early explorers seemed to regard it as their duty to kill polar bears. A careful reading of the historical literature reveals very few accounts where an enraged bear charged at a human being."

An example of the attitudes can be found in an study of the animals of the Arctic, "Narrative of Discovery and Adventure in the Polar Seas", 1842, (which can be found on Google Books):

"All [their] sources of supply being precarious, he is sometimes left for weeks without food, and the fury of his hunger then becomes tremendous. At such periods, man, viewed by him always as his prey, is attacked with peculiar fierceness.

"The annals of the north are filled with accounts of the most perilous and fatal conflicts of the Polar bear. The first, and one of the most tragical, was sustained by Barentz and Heemskerke, in 1596, during their voyage for the discovery of the north-east passage. Having anchored at an island near the stiait of Waygatz, two of the sailors landed, and were walking on shore, when one of them felt himself closely hugged from behind. Thinking this a frolic of one of his companions, he called out in a corresponding tone, " Who's there ? pray stand off." His comrade looked, and, screamed out, "A bear! a bear!" then running to the ship, alarmed the crew with loud cries. The sailors ran to the spot armed with pikes and muskets. On their approach the bear very coolly quitted the mangled corpse, sprang upon another sailor, carried him off, and, plunging his teeth into his body, began drinking his blood at long draughts. Hereupon the whole of that stout crew, struck with terror, turned their backs, and fled precipitately to the ship. On arriving there they began to look at each other, unable to feel much satisfaction with their own prowess. Three then stood forth, undertaking to avenge the fate of their countrymen, and to secure for them the rites of burial. They advanced, and fired at first from so respectful a distance that they all missed. The purser then courageously proceeded in front of his companions, and, taking a close aim, pierced the monster's skull immediately below the eye. The bear, however, merely lifted his head, and advanced upon them, holding still in his mouth the victim whom he was devouring; but seeing him soon stagger, the three rushed on with sabre and bayonet, and soon despatched him. They collected and bestowed decent sepulture on the mangled limbs of their comrades, while the skin of the animal, thirteen feet long, became the prize of the sailor who had fired the successful shot."

If global warming continues at its present pace and if we humans are contributing to that warming, estimates are that we will have succeeded in killing off all polar bears by 2050. What began as an informal process of elimination would then be completed in a wholesale fashion.

The book itself is a triumph, necessary reading for anyone with the slightest interest in these magnificent creatures.

Robert C. Ross 2009

I don't own this book, so I can't review it comprehensively. However, at least one page blatantly copies--basically word for word--from a Wikipedia article. (Compare page 242 of the book to the wikipedia article "Binky (polar bear)", particularly the version of the article as of April 2008--a year before the book was published.) If this is the author's idea of scholarship, I wonder about the rest of the book.

I wanted to enjoy this book, but I just couldn't. Unfortunately, Richard Ellis has the habit of writing a well-researched book, but then making the most bizarre of mistakes (Men & Whales, which he wrote in 1991, is chock-full of them).

The mistakes start on page 16, only a few pages into the first chapter (after a brief Intro). In quoting from Richard Perry's 1966 book The World of the Polar Bear he fails to see that Perry gave the wrong date for Hugh Willoughby's wintering near Murmansk. Perry says it occurred in 1558, when it really happened in 1553-54. More likely, knowing Ellis, he probably made the mistake himself.

On pages 17 and 18 Ellis quotes a passage from Gerrit de Veer's account of Willem Barentsz' three voyages from 1594 to 1596. Ellis attributes the quote, which describes the naming of Bear Island, an island just south of Spitsbergen, to the year 1595. The event, in fact, took place the following year, 1596, which Ellis correctly relates in Men & Whales (p. 51). As you will notice later on, Ellis has the maddening habit of contradicting his sources and himself, often within the very same work. Ellis goes on to say that they again visited Bear Island in 1596.

On pages 20 and 21 Ellis claims that the men that survived the 1596-97 wintering returned to Europe and reported there to be an abundance of whales in Spitsbergen's waters. They did no such thing. In neither of the surviving accounts, one by De Veer and the other allegedly written by Barentsz himself, was there any mention of sightings of whales. Mention is only made of the discovery of a single dead whale on June 15, just before they discovered the northwestern corner of Spitsbergen. Hudson was the first to report seeing a multitude of whales off Spitsbergen's coasts, while Jonas Poole's 1610 report of a "great store of whales" led to the first whaling ships being sent there.

On the following paragraph on page 21 Ellis continues with his blunders:

"The British ship Salutation, under Captain William Goodler, set out on a whaling voyage on May 1, 1630, heading for Greenland."

It was actually an English ship (a minor point, yes, but it was a big difference then), and it was under the command of John Mason. William Goodlad (not Goodler, which it is misspelled in Pellham's narrative) was admiral of the English whaling fleet that year, a post he held from 1620 until the late 1630s. They weren't heading for Greenland, but Spitsbergen--the English often calling the latter the former through out the seventeenth century. In the following sentence he says the ship anchored in Bell Sound, on Spitsbergen's west coast, where eight men were sent ashore to get reindeer. In reality, the ship anchored in Sir Thomas Smith's Bay (modern Forlandsundet) early in June, where it spent most of the season whaling. By mid-August, the ship had made its way to a spot somewhere off Ice Sound (Isfjorden), where those eight men were actually sent to fetch reindeer. The men were marooned, and forced to spend a winter in Bell Sound, just to the south. Ellis not only screwed up the date, making it appear as though the men were marooned upon arrival to Spitsbergen, but messed up the location as well. He at least got the names of the eight men correct. Quite the accomplishment for Ellis!

On page 22, after covering most of the page with quotes, Ellis, now having to rely on only himself, once again baffles the mind. He says two ships from Hull arrived on May 25, 1631 to relieve the eight men. All, indeed, correct. He then claims: "one of the two ships was the Salutation that had marooned them nine months earlier... it was the very ship and captain that had abandoned them." Pellham's narrative makes absolutely no mention of this fact. Nor does Lancelot Anderson, who later claimed to have been one of the two Hull whaling masters who rescued him. Pellham later, however, mentions the arrival of the London fleet, among them "Master Mason". Where Ellis got this information from, I can't say. It certainly couldn't have been from any primary source.

On the very next paragraph Ellis says it was the Basque whaler Jean Vrolicq who raided one of the Dutch whaling stations on Jan Mayen in 1632. Although Vrolicq was among those driven away from Spitsbergen by the Dutch that year, he had no part in the raid. He had sailed to Iceland after being dismissed by the Dutch admiral. Late in August two Basque ships, under Pierre Piasion and Joanes de Segaroia, landed on Jan Mayen, stole a quantity of oil and baleen, and damaged the station there. This is clearly stated in Sune Dalgård's 1962 work Dansk-Norsk Hvalfangst i 1615-1660 (pp. 169-71). Ellis repeats this mistake on page 27.

On page 26 Ellis blindly repeats the oft-claimed discovery of Jan Mayen by Henry Hudson in 1607. There is not a shred of evidence for the claim. Thomas Edge, a whaling merchant and master, who had sailed to Spitsbergen on at least nine occasions, writing in 1622, was the first to claim that one "William" Hudson in 1608 had discovered an island in 71 degrees north which he named Hudson's Touches. First off, Hudson's first name and the date of the event (had it actually occurred) are off. Secondly, the only surviving account of that 1607 voyage was published in the same work Edge's was: Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625). The account says nothing of the discovery of such an island. There is also not a single contemporary map that shows this alleged discovery.

Just a few pages later, on page 28, Ellis once again falls in error, albeit a relatively small one. In speaking of Frederich Martens' 1671 voyage to Spitsbergen aboard a Hamburg whaler, he strangely says the ship arrived at the islands in August! By then the ship had already left for home! The ship had arrived at the islands months earlier, on June 14.

I couldn't go much further. I wanted to finish this book. I really thought I'd enjoy it. I made the mistake of early on looking in the index to see what he said about polar bears and the whaling industry in Spitsbergen. I was quite dismayed. From pages 140 to 142 Ellis makes a series of curious mistakes.

On pages 140 and 141 he gives a description one of Jonas Poole's encounters with polar bears. He attributes it to 1610, saying Poole was pilot of the Amity that year in leading "the third expedition to Spitsbergen". The description is from an encounter Poole had in 1609, at Bear Island, not Spitsbergen. In that year Poole was master of the Lioness. In 1610 he was master, not pilot, of the Amity.

On page 142 Ellis gives nearly an entire paragraph of dumb mistakes. He starts off by saying the Dutch were the first to send whalers to Spitsbergen, followed by the British (really English) in 1611. The English did send their first whaling expedition there in 1611, but the Dutch didn't precede them. They sent out their first walrus-hunting expedition to Spitsbergen in 1612, and their first whaling expedition the following year. Sadly, by making the above mistake, Ellis contradicted what he said in Men & Whales (p. 57) nearly two decades earlier, where he got the order of the two correct!

The sentences following this defy explanation. Ellis says Dutch attempts to send wintering parties to Spitsbergen PRECEDED the establishment of the whaling settlement of Smeerenburg. Smeerenburg was established in 1619, while the first attempts (none of which were followed through) were made in the 1620s. Without Smeerenburg such wintering attempts could not have been even thought of! Ellis then claims the Dutch returned to Smeerenburg every spring after the successful wintering of a group of men led by Jacob van der Brugge in 1633-34. By saying this he makes it appear as though the Dutch had built Smeerenburg immediately prior to the first wintering; which, of course, is far from the truth. By doing this Ellis once again contradicts himself: in Men & Whales (p. 61-62) he correctly ascertains that Smeerenburg was established several years before the first winterings.

I can't imagine what other mistakes Ellis has made in this book on subjects I'm not as knowledgeable of. Unless you already have a very good understanding of Artic history and science, I'd pass on this book.

If you have enjoyed the allegations that polar bears are endangered and want to believe, despite stable and/or increasing populations, then this book is for you. Its a master work of popular culture substituting for science. One becomes gradually more alarmed as minor mistakes mount; mistranslations from German, a fact-challenged recounting of the history of Theordore Roosevelt and the Teddy Bear, the statement that global temperatures have never risen so fast as now (check out the Medieval Warming period). The author then recounts the indescriminate killing of polar bears in early centuries, characteristic of how all wildlife was once treated, and then attempts to portray modern, regulated sport hunting in the same light. He praises the endangered species act listing while not mentioning that polar bear hunting provided much funding for polar bear conservation- that money went away with listing. He constantly refers to quotes from polar bear researchers in an attempt to garner credibility, yet ignores that many did not want to see the listing, or believe that the bears are actually endangered. Of course, global warming is addressed, but in the usual way. Dire predictions of things to come if "the warming trend" continues, without any critical thoughts about the current data quality supporting the envisioned trend. Ellis has not produced a valuable work on polar bears, he has merely cashed in on alarmist press.