Autumn The Polar Bear Family & Me

The polar bear.

The world's largest and most dangerous carnivore.

I'm Gordon Buchanan,

and I've spent two decades filming predators in extreme locations.

Now I've come to the Arctic to get closer to polar bears

than anyone before.

No way, mate! No luck.

Oh, well. The next thing on the menu is the film crew.

But this is the toughest project yet.

Go, go, go, go, go!

This bear is paying us too much attention.

We just had to get out of there.

I've been following a single polar bear family -

Lyra and her cub, Miki -

to see how they really live.

Every single day is a series of challenges,

a series of hardships.

It's not been easy,

and it's about to get a whole lot harder.

Following my bears in autumn could prove impossible,

and they're on the edge of starvation.

I'm here, one last time, to see if Miki will survive.

It's September and I'm back in the Arctic.

'I want to reconnect with my polar bear family.

I last saw them in July.

I'm dying to see how they're doing now.

But finding two bears in this enormous wilderness

is not going to be easy.

We'll set up a base in a cabin on the shore

and start our search from there.

And, boy, this place has changed! Changed again.

The warm summer has transformed the Arctic.

Snow and ice has given way to barren ground.

With me is Arctic expert Jason Roberts.

Jason's had more experience with polar bears

than almost anyone alive.

Luxury accommodation, Gordon(!)

I keep expecting to show up here

and it's been flattened by the wind or by a huge polar bear.

As we prepare to settle in, I see we aren't the only visitors.

This is quite a sobering thought.

A polar bear's pushed through this glass,

exactly onto the position where I sleep.

Imagine that - fast asleep,

and you hear a noise and you look up,

and a polar bear's bust this window right on top of you.

Back in March, six months ago, I stayed in this very same cabin.

It was incredible to film a moment few people have ever seen...

..a mother polar bear and her cubs emerging from their birth den.

This is the best thing ever really.

Lyra and her two little ones, Miki and Luca.

I knew that keeping cubs Miki and Luca alive

would be a huge challenge for Lyra.

For me, the challenge would be staying with them.

Hi. Gordon.

Very good to meet you.

'I helped biologist Dr Jon Aars

'fit a revolutionary satellite-tracking collar on Lyra.

'He wants to learn how polar bears are coping

'with a rapidly-warming Arctic.

'For me, it was the start of a bond

'that grew stronger as the months went by.'

How does it sound if I follow you around,

become good friends, until you get big enough to eat me?

While Jon tracks Lyra's movements from his computer back in Norway,

I've been on the ground, staying as close to my bears as I can.

It's been an amazing journey.

I've shared so much with these bears, both highs and lows.

When I reported to Jon that Lyra had lost her weaker cub, Luca,

I was devastated.

I think it's just a testament to how incredible these animals are

that she's been able to keep this one cub alive.

When I last saw my bears,

Lyra and Miki were stranded on a string of islands

and close to starvation.

Now I'm back, I'm desperate

to find my bear family again and to see whether Miki is still alive.

It isn't going to be easy.

Lyra and Miki are somewhere around here,

but we don't know exactly where.

'Lyra's collar has started to malfunction.'

So when was the last fix we got on Lyra?

It's not good news.

The last fix is about four weeks ago,

so it's going to be a bit of a guess where she's actually located.

I'm worried that finding Lyra is going to be impossible.

With winter approaching, we can't risk staying here too long.

-Gordon.

-Yeah.

-Time to roll.

OK.

'Next morning, our search begins.'

Sleep OK?

Yeah, not bad actually.

A little bit cold in the night.

I don't know who was snoring, if it was one of us or the walrus outside.

We'll head to the collar's last position and start from there.

From then on, it's down to our knowledge of our bears.

There's a real chance Miki won't have made it.

This year, scientists observed less Arctic sea ice

than since records began in the '70s,

possibly the least amount of ice in 3 million years.

Normally, the sea ice remains until late August,

but this year, it melted almost two months early.

Polar bears eat seals.

Seals breed and rest on the ice.

Without the ice, Lyra can't hunt.

She and Miki may not survive.

We've been looking for Lyra and Miki all morning.

We pass the radio collar position from four weeks ago

and, not surprisingly, no sign of our bears.

They could have travelled hundreds of miles in the last month.

You can expect minus temperatures, snow at this time of year.

It's very windy and very wet, quite cold,

but it's a long way from freezing.

It's hard to imagine that this place is actually going to freeze up

over the next couple of months.

This just seems like a wet afternoon in the west coast of Scotland.

That's what the polar bears are waiting for -

they are waiting for the first signs of winter.

Winter is a time that they can start hunting again,

but they need the sea to freeze

and it feels a very, very long way away from that at the moment.

We decide to scan the coastline.

We're thinking it's the best place for Lyra to look for food now.

Perhaps a walrus washed up on the shore.

And it looks like our hunch might be right.

A couple of polar bears up on the slope here,

and the good thing about this area is it's quite sheltered,

and it's maybe going to let us get ashore.

I really hope this is Lyra and Miki.

They look the right size.

It's a female with a cub of this year.

We'll have to get much closer to find out if it is them.

Back out, Oskar.

They're incredibly camouflaged when they're muddy and dirty but...

I know, gosh! Blend in with the mountainside.

They're the right size. We've got a smaller... We've got a cub up top.

Looks like a mother further down.

If we can pick up a collar...

They've turned round, facing back towards us so...

-Yeah, I can definitely see a collar.

-Yeah?

-It's definitely Lyra.

-Is it her?

It's a huge relief to have found them.

Six weeks ago, they were together

but anything could have happened in that time,

and to find both of them still together is magnificent.

But Lyra is not looking good.

My two carnivores have resorted to eating hillside moss.

For this time of year, we expect her to be lean,

but she's looking a lot worse than I would have expected actually so...

And it's only early in the autumn, so she still has four, five months

before she has some good hunting,

so she'll be scavenging for a long time still.

So the chance is that, in the last six weeks,

she hasn't had significant meal.

I think in the last six weeks, she's basically eaten a bit of moss.

There's not even grass on these mountains for her to eat.

There's a bit of lichen on the rocks and a bit of moss,

and that's about it.

For a polar bear, moss has little nutritional benefit...

..but it might just stave off Lyra's hunger pangs.

It's a huge relief to have found both of them still alive,

both together, but that relief is tinged with worry.

It's going to be a long time before the sea re-freezes,

before she's going to be able to hunt on the sea ice,

the sea ice that polar bears need,

and the big worry is whether she can actually last that long.

As we film Lyra and Miki,

they move down the hillside to the seaweed washed up on the shore.

So I suppose a vegetarian diet for a carnivore

-is not the best thing, Jason.

-No.

I think, occasionally, it helps them to eat some kelp, some seaweed -

gets a bit of salt in their diet, so they like it as an extra,

but as their prime source of food at the moment, it's not the best.

You can see how narrow she is around the rear end there -

really very, very slim.

You see her top shoulder bone sticking up high.

There's meat still there,

but there's definitely no fat or blubber on her.

If you contrast her with Miki,

he's healthy and fat-looking,

and that's because he's been feeding off of Lyra's milk.

He's doing well.

There's plenty for him to eat,

or at least plenty for him to drink.

Poor Lyra has been really...

..deprived of all food.

It's hard to be objective about an animal you've grown so close to.

I know how hard Lyra has struggled to keep Miki alive.

I really feel for her.

She's been such a nice bear from the first moment

we met her at a den when she put her head out.

-I feel so comfortable with her...

-Yeah.

..that she's not going to turn on us or do anything.

I mean, do you think we can trust her entirely,

or do you think there's going to be a balance

where her hunger is going to make her change her attitude towards us?

There's always that final, do you trust her,

do you not trust her, all the way?

I trust her most of the way, but you never know with them.

Especially at moments like this,

-when she's obviously getting very hungry.

-Mm.

This family are desperate.

They can survive like this for a while, but for how much longer?

Seeing the Arctic like this,

it seems like an unlikely place to find Lyra and Miki feeding.

There's not any snow in sight,

but when you think about the evolutionary history of polar bears,

it makes a lot more sense.

All present day bear species evolved from a common ancestor.

What that ancestor did was move out, branch, expand

and populate different habitats across the world,

and each one of those bear species

became very good at living in a particular habitat.

Grizzly bears are the polar bears' closest relative,

but they've evolved for warmer landscapes.

They'll happily eat plants as well as meat.

Their diet is less specialised.

But recent evidence suggests polar bears have spent

four million years adapting to hunt seals on the ice.

Now, the Arctic sea ice is vanishing so rapidly,

it seems unlikely that polar bears can adapt in time.

If the ice continues to disappear, their future looks uncertain.

Back at the cabin, I call biologist Jon Aars on the satellite phone.

-'Hello.'

-Hi, Jon, it's Gordon here.

We've found Lyra and Miki, and both are alive but Miki looks great -

very fat and healthy - but Lyra's looking really quite thin.

You can tell that, since I was last here,

she really hasn't had that much to eat.

'OK, so she's eaten very, very little.'

Cub survival rates are the best measure

of the health of a polar bear population.

And, this year, with so little ice,

my observations are even more valuable for Jon.

'He wants me to check exactly what Lyra is eating on the shoreline.'

-OK, Jon, thank you very much.

-'Yeah, thank you. Thanks a lot.'

Cheers. Bye. Bye.

In the Arctic, we're at the mercy of the elements.

With rough weather, our boat isn't safe anchored here.

The Havsel has to pull out,

and we don't want to get stranded at the cabin.

The conditions have got much worse.

The wind's picked up, so the sea has picked up.

Visibility is almost down to nothing,

so we're not going to be able to get ashore and look for Lyra,

so we're going to head back to the Havsel.

This is the hardest place I've ever tried to work.

It's not just the weather.

It's so remote, wild, and unforgiving.

Forget the polar bears, getting on and off this boat is about the most dangerous thing we can do.

I really want to help Jon understand how Lyra and Miki are surviving...

..but I can't do that if I'm stuck onboard.

The next morning, we move the Havsel as close to Lyra's beach as we can.

The crew scan the coast for any sign of the bears...

..and eventually find them -

two small dots on the shore.

I just don't know what she's doing here.

You've got an animal that can walk huge distances,

can swim huge distances.

Lyra could go anywhere that she wants,

and I don't know whether that's been an error on her part,

whether she came down here because it's a place that she knows,

a place where she's done well in years before,

but this year, she is not doing well here, not doing well at all.

I can only imagine the incredible journey

Lyra has taken over the last six months.

In April, with two tiny cubs, she headed out onto the sea ice.

She drifted west with the ice...

..and then made her way up the coast.

She probably had to swim long distances.

It may have been on one of these swims that she lost Luca.

Lyra and Miki have travelled over a thousand miles.

She's returned to within a few miles of the den

where her cubs were born - an amazing feat of navigation.

At last the wind drops and we attempt to get to Lyra.

It's too windy to get this boat in the water,

so we're going to take the Zodiac into the shore.

The ice makes conditions very difficult to work in,

but, actually, it's worse when it's like this.

'The water is only just above freezing,

'the wind is biting.

'Jason and I are wearing full survival suits.

'If we fell into the water without the suits,

'we'd be dead before the Havsel could send a boat to rescue us.'

This is pretty bad conditions.

The visibility isn't much of a problem,

but the big problem is the sea state, the wind.

If finding polar bears wasn't hard enough,

when you add the weather conditions like this,

it makes it almost impossible.

We've actually run aground here. It's really very, very shallow.

That's why we can't bring the big boat in close.

What is this, less than a metre?

Gosh!

This is what makes filming polar bears so damn dangerous -

these conditions, unchartered waters.

There's something quite apocalyptic about this scene.

These two dirty animals scavenging on the shoreline here -

it's not an iconic animal in a pristine wilderness.

And this may well be the future for polar bears.

This may be a scene that is repeated throughout the Arctic -

polar bears struggling to survive on land when they should be on ice.

They're feeding on something, I can see something in the kelp.

Don't know what that is, it kind of looks like eggs,

but there's a cluster of them.

There wouldn't be a cluster of eggs, not at this time of year.

'It's hard to believe there's any food here for a polar bear.

'But Lyra IS definitely eating something.

This is where she was, she was right here.

Look at this - it's all...fishing floats.

She can't have been eating them.

Oh, actually you can see there's tooth marks on these floats.

They'd have been entirely covered in plastic -

it's a kind of rigid polystyrene -

and she has been chewing away on that.

This is something that is filling her stomach full of plastic,

possibly full of toxins,

something that has absolutely zero nutritional benefit.

That's what she's been doing.

What an absolutely grim vision -

these two animals reduced to, not just scavenging on the beach,

but actually eating plastic,

eating stuff that human beings have thrown over the side of ships.

I really am worried about Lyra and the next couple of months.

This is the hardest time for polar bears in a normal year.

She is down on her luck,

she has hardly fed on a substantial meal for months now.

The fact that she's chewing on this stuff

just shows that she is literally starving.

I really worry whether she is able, whether she has the reserves

to see it through the next couple of months,

and Miki, despite the fact that he looks healthy enough,

without his mother, he's doomed.

Back on the bridge of the Havsel, we want to report back to Jon.

He needs to know what we've seen.

The fact that Lyra's eating plastic just shows how she's struggling.

I'm worried that Lyra's milk will dry up.

When I was last here, I filmed Miki suckling.

He'll need his mother's milk for another year.

But Lyra has to eat to produce milk.

There's no ice for her to hunt on,

and she's used all of her fat,

and is now converting her own muscle into milk.

Lyra is wasting away.

When we next get back to Lyra, she looks worse than ever.

It's heart-breaking to see Lyra like this.

And if she's in trouble, Miki's in danger, too.

I wonder if she's going to let Miki suckle.

Miki wanted to suckle but...

She recognised that look in his eyes.

Lyra's refusing to let Miki suckle.

It's the first time we've seen her turn him down.

For Lyra, this is terribly hard.

She wants to keep feeding him, but she can't produce enough milk.

Eventually, Lyra's milk will completely dry up.

Miki may not survive.

Ah, they are beautiful.

The next morning, I want to get straight back out.

I'm worried Lyra may stop feeding Miki altogether.

But the weather closes in and we're stuck onboard.

Every moment that passes, I'm losing vital time with my bear family.

I keep thinking we're the only ship out here,

but listening to the radio,

there's weather warnings, some ships in trouble.

Just behind us, a big Russian fishing ship's come in to shelter.

One thing's for sure - there won't be a single ship that's not at anchor.

Anyone that's in this part of the Arctic is doing what we're doing,

looking for the safest, most sheltered place.

-Everything OK?

-Yeah, we're just dropping a second anchor.

-A second anchor.

-We can stay forever.

THEY CHUCKLE

Forever! We might have to stay forever.

It's better to do it right now because later on...

-It could get worse?

-Yeah.

We lose a whole day to the wind and rain,

and, the next morning, Lyra's gone.

Without a working collar, we don't know where to start looking for her.

If she was still up on that ridge,

we'd be able to see her from here, wouldn't we?

Each morning, we have to try and relocate Lyra,

and we're hoping she's on the same stretch of coastline.

The only means of transport, really, that we have,

beyond walking, are the boats,

and if she does go into the middle of the island,

she can walk much faster than us,

and trying to keep up with her on foot is going to be next to impossible.

We head back out.

But no joy. She's moved off and we can't find her.

This is bad news.

I only have just over a week left in the Arctic.

If we can't locate Lyra and Miki, that's it, the end of our project.

In hopes of finding her, we head for a nearby glacier.

Maybe she's come here in search of seals.

We've got this beautiful glacial wall here.

It just looks like marble.

This is snow that fell 10,000 years ago, high up in the mountains.

These glaciers are constantly moving,

some at a very, very slow rate, and when they meet the sea,

the sea water - which is much warmer - causes them to calve,

for ice to fall in, and it forms icebergs that float out to sea.

If these longer summer conditions - lack of sea ice - persist,

these glacier areas are going to become

increasingly more important for polar bears.

This gives them a set of circumstances that

might give them a chance to hunt seals.

There you go. Obviously, a seal couldn't get up on to something

like that, but this bit that's fallen off - a perfect place.

A seal could easily get out there,

lie there, thinking it's safe and secure,

and, unknown to that seal, it might be being watched by a polar bear.

ICE BANGS THE BOAT

And the band played on!

GORDON LAUGHS

What's the name of that big ship that had a problem with one of these things?

There's no sign of Lyra and Miki.

We head back to the Havsel, away from the shelter of the glacier.

'But, as the water gets rougher, we spot a bear.'

Come on, Lyra, is that you?

'I'm desperate for it to be Lyra.'

Hang on, did I see a collar?

I thought I just caught a glimpse of a collar

but it's hard to tell, the boat's moving about so much.

There's definitely a cub there.

Come on, girl!

Is that you?

-That's not her, is it?

-It's not her. I don't believe it.

You can even see in her face it's not, it's not Lyra.

Ah, man!

I don't believe it.

Oh, no!

I just...

I thought when we caught a glimpse of these bears,

I just so wanted it to be her.

We don't know where she is. We really don't.

There's two cubs, yeah. There's one behind it.

Oh, look at them! They are good-looking cubs.

She's done a spectacular job in getting these cubs to this size.

Two cubs in this area is no mean feat.

The female is big for this time of year

and the cubs are just looking wonderful.

'These two cubs are a full year older than Miki.'

I've got a feeling both the cubs are males.

Yeah, they've got that look about them, don't they?

Yeah, and they're both so inquisitive.

There may be enough food that they're scavenging off the beaches -

things, animals that have died and washed up on the shore.

It just seems really strange that we've got this healthy mother

and two healthy cubs marooned here on this island.

It's just... I don't understand it.

This does give me hope for Lyra and Miki,

because if a mother with two cubs can survive down here,

a mother with one hopefully can as well.

It's just a question of where is she?

I think we skirt the islands and keep looking.

As we move around the shore searching for Lyra,

we discover why the other bears look so healthy.

A whale carcass.

Oh, it smells very, very ripe.

This is a smell that will carry on the wind,

and polar bears in this area will know will know that it's here.

It could well be that this whale carcass

has actually been here for most of the year.

For a hungry polar bear in desperate times, this is a magnificent find.

There's lots of blubber there.

Most of it's gone, but there is still something to eat.

Some polar bears' favourite song is the old wartime classic,

"Whale Meat Again."

In other parts of the Arctic, traditional whale-hunting

provides a rich source of food for polar bears.

The hunters drag the whales up onto the ice,

take the blubber and leave the rest.

A lifeline for hungry bears at this time of year.

It may well be that with these longer periods of no sea ice,

it's those bears that are living close to indigenous hunters

who hunt whales are actually doing better.

It's an intriguing thought and maybe a glimmer of hope.

Climate change may be bad for polar bears,

but that doesn't mean people have to be.

I just hope Lyra can smell this carcass

and get herself and Miki here.

It might be their only hope for survival.

We try a nearby island that polar bears have been lured to for decades.

On the shore stands a deserted cabin.

This cabin was actually built by people that had

an interest in polar bears.

It was built by trappers.

This area was selected because there was a high density at that time.

Hundreds, thousands of polar bears were shot from cabins like this,

and there's little traces of it.

You can see someone's actually scratched a polar bear head in here.

Another one here, and initials PJ.

That's Per Jonsson, who over-wintered here '68 into '69.

One thing that trappers would do -

they'd stick just a simple big pole up by the cabin.

The trappers would take advantage of a polar bear's curiosity

and they'd erect these poles.

This is something that could be seen for miles and miles.

A polar bear in this fairly featureless landscape would see this

and just naturally be drawn to it.

You can see here a polar bear has been chewing,

and some huge, enormous polar bear has stretched all the way up there.

This post is in a direct line of sight, across the sound,

to where Lyra had her den.

This island undoubtedly is a place that she's come to

many, many times in the past.

The posts lured the bears to the island.

But, of course, it was a trap.

So the trap would have been mounted on a post,

a rifle mounted on top, with the barrel going down through here.

You need a fairly high-powered rifle to kill a polar bear outright.

Inside the box, there would have been lump of seal meat or blubber,

tied to this string.

Driven by hunger, the polar bear would have come forward,

stuck its head in, grabbed the meat with its mouth,

pulled the string, pulled the trigger

and been shot through the back of the head.

This is a place where thousands of polar bears

have come for generations,

and if Lyra and Miki were alive when polar bear hunting continued here,

they would almost certainly visited this island,

almost certainly come to something like this for food,

and almost certainly been killed.

Using this method,

polar bears in this region were almost driven to extinction.

In the heyday, trappers killed around

400 polar bears on Svalbard every year.

The dead bears were loaded onto boats and shipped to the mainland.

They were sold for their fur.

Cubs were kept alive and sent to zoos.

There are probably more polar bear bones littering these beaches

than anywhere else in the world.

By the early 1970s, polar bear numbers here

were so low that their future was uncertain.

In 1973, the Norwegian government stepped in

and banned all hunting of polar bears.

It's taken 30 years, but today, the bears here have recovered.

The Svalbard population is stable, at least for now.

But, incredibly, polar bear hunting

still continues in the USA, Canada and Greenland.

Most hunting is by native peoples,

but I wonder if any hunting is sustainable.

Polar bears face so many challenges,

almost all of them brought about by us.

Every day, the conditions change.

The next morning, the wind is coming from a different direction.

It'll make landing at Lyra's beach easier.

I'm really hoping Lyra and Miki will have returned.

And we're in luck.

Our family is back,

but Lyra's behaviour is different.

-That's interesting - she's coming towards us.

-Yeah.

Here she goes.

OK, Lyra is...

..getting a little bit closer.

This is when I start getting nervous. Just a bit.

OK, Lyra, I can see that you're smelling the air,

and I'm just a little bit worried that it's the smell

that's coming from me that's holding your attention.

This is not a bear that is at all scared.

This is a bear that's figuring out what's going on,

whether there is an opportunity to feed here.

We are completely downwind,

so Miki's getting quite a good scent of us here.

Lyra's always actually moved away from us

and kept her personal distance, and right at the moment,

it's the first time in the last year of being with her

that she's actually turned around and come towards us, and her...

It's her body movement and her stance that worries me a little bit.

When she's tense, she basically puts her front paws forward

and builds up a stance that's like a spring ready to take off, you know.

When they come at you, their initial speed is incredibly fast.

This is the first time I've felt threatened by Lyra.

If she comes, you drop everything.

You drop the monitor, you drop the camera.

-WOMAN:

-Jason, is he safe there?

Let me just grab one more shot of Lyra.

-I don't like it.

-OK, shall we move back, then?

If you don't like it, I'd rather move back now.

-Please. Gordon?

-OK.

Right, Lyra, that's close enough for now.

Despite the fact that she hasn't been aggressive towards us at all,

there may well come a point where she views me differently,

that she sees me and thinks, possibly,

"This is something that I can eat. Maybe this is my next meal."

We may be safe, but I'm so worried about Lyra and Miki.

It's really hard to see Lyra suffering.

I'd love to be able to feed her,

but it's illegal to feed any wildlife on Svalbard.

I don't want Lyra to associate humans with food.

It could be dangerous for people and for her.

With less ice, it means harder times for polar bears,

and they will have to find new, different sources of food,

and that may very well mean

it brings them closer to people living and working in the Arctic.

So our relationship with these huge predators

may well become more troubled.

With the conditions so bad this year,

I want to know whether polar bears

have been driven closer to humans in search of food.

There are a few places on Svalbard where people live year round.

One of them is the Polish research station at Hornsund.

They've had bears visit them this year, but no fatal run-ins,

thanks to a tried and tested polar bear warning system.

-Hello, girl.

-Lola.

-Lola - that's my daughter's name.

'Liliana Keslinka-Nawrot has worked at the base for almost a year.'

She's the bravest one.

So if a polar bear walks in, the dogs start barking,

-and do they scare it off most times?

-Yes.

-Really?

-Yeah.

Dogs like Lola bark as soon as they get a whiff of a bear.

This gives the researchers time to come out with a flare gun

and scare it off.

For Lola here, how close has she been to a polar bear?

-Well, she was attacked three years ago.

-Was she?

-Yes.

She had some stitches on her... Here, over here! ..on the leg.

SHE SPEAKS IN POLISH

After she was attacked by the polar bear,

did her attitude change towards them, was she more scared?

-No, she just got more brave.

-She just got on with her job?

-Yes.

From the polar bears that you've seen come through here,

have you noticed that some are more curious,

that they do have different personalities?

Yes. Yeah, some are scared once and they go away,

but some are really just so starving, so hungry.

I do think it's great the way that the dogs' senses are used

to keep people safe from polar bears.

They've got excellent hearing, fantastic sense of smell,

and there's absolutely no technology in the world

that can detect polar bears as good as a dog can.

It's a small sign of hope.

There are ways to keep both people and polar bears safe.

I want to get back to Lyra and Miki once more, but time is running out.

Now it's all down to the weather.

As autumn progresses, storms become more frequent.

Soon, it will be too treacherous for us to stay.

Our time with the bears is coming to an end.

-We've got a strong gale...

-OK.

-..and rain, so what we've got may be a bit worse.

-OK.

I'd hoped to spend more time with Lyra,

but, before we can get back to the shore,

a storm rolls in and we have to strap everything down.

It seems like it's bad everywhere in this area.

We just got the forecast through.

"Cyclonic gale 8 to storm 10, occasionally violent storm,

"11 for a time, becoming mainly northwesterly 6 to scale 8 later.

"Very rough or high. Becoming very high for a time.

"Rain or showers.

"Poor," it says. Poor. Very poor.

We're stuck onboard the Havsel and it's not looking good.

We lose two full days to the bad weather.

I can't stand it any longer.

We decide to try and get ashore...

..despite the terrible conditions.

We've been sitting out, waiting for the weather to clear up,

and it hasn't cleared up,

but I'm desperate to get ashore and look for Lyra,

and the only way to do that is to get into the Zodiac and go ashore,

but it's incredibly dangerous conditions.

But, you know, what can I do?

It's either just sit here and wait,

without a single hope of seeing Lyra,

or at least try the only option that we've got,

and I'm prepared to do that.

The winds are 50 knots, the waves are short and steep.

If we get too much air under the Zodiac, we'll flip.

Jason has to keep the boat pointed into the wind,

and I have to keep my weight forward.

We can't go too slowly or we'll be swamped by the waves from behind.

Oh, my God! Oh, my God!

Come back, come back, come back, come back, come back, come back!

'I'm OK but badly winded.'

'It's just too dangerous to continue.'

It's so hard to work here,

and it's for this reason that we know so little about polar bears.

At every turn, we're scuppered by the terrain and the weather.

It's getting too risky to stay in the Arctic much longer.

-You all right?

-Yeah.

Bloody impossible. There's just too much wind, too many waves.

What happens is, the wave hits the front of boat,

the boat lifts up and it becomes like a huge sail.

We were very close to just tipping right over.

And despite the fact we've got this big boat here,

if we go in the water in these conditions...

I don't want to think about it.

Overnight, the wind begins to drop.

And, by daybreak, the clouds have started to lift.

It's my last chance to get ashore.

Lyra's here on the same stretch of beach.

But I can't see Miki.

Gosh, Lyra, you have done an incredible job!

There's been an unbelievable transformation in this cub

since I first met him, way back at the start of the year.

He was a tiny ball of fur back then.

If Miki does make it to adulthood,

it will be entirely down to the hard work of Lyra.

Lyra is 17 years old - she's getting on as a mother.

I doubt she will have another litter of cubs.

Miki could be her last.

It would be so good to think that she could get him through.

But my time with Lyra and Miki is over.

We've been through so much together.

I can honestly say it's been a privilege.

They have endured all that this, the toughest of years,

has thrown at them.

Their story isn't over

but, for me, it's time to go.

Soon, there will be only a few hours of light each day.

Then storms and perpetual darkness will engulf the Arctic.

I can't stay until the ice returns.

It's just too dangerous.

I'm forced to leave Lyra and Miki.

I'll never see them again.

My time with Lyra and Miki has shown me

how vulnerable polar bears really are.

They belong here and only here.

They are part of this extraordinary Arctic world,

but their world is changing,

and their future is unsure.

Having followed Lyra and her family,

they've given me this rare insight, not just into their lives,

but they've helped me better understand polar bears as a whole.

For thousands of years, polar bears have been shaped,

been fine-tuned by this landscape,

the climate, the ice, the seals that they hunt,

to the extent that polar bears aren't just a symbol of the Arctic,

they are the embodiment of ALL life here in the Arctic.

It's easy to understand how polar bears have become

this powerful emblem and it is almost unimaginable

that there could be a future without them.

But Lyra and Miki's story has one final twist.

Six weeks after I returned home, I heard news from Svalbard.

Lyra's broken collar had sent one last update.

She had travelled 100 miles north,

to a place where a whale carcass had been seen from the air -

enough food to see her through the winter.

I'll never know for sure if Miki was with her.

But I've seen him defy the odds again and again.

I think he made it, too.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd