Polar bear hearing studied to gauge drilling effects

SAN DIEGO – Shikari is making that huffing sound that polar bears make when they’re checking out their surroundings.

The 12-year-old, 550-pound Ursus maritimus is also eyeing the four humans watching her from behind steel bars. Her thick black nose is twitching with the scent of her visitors.

But most important, Shikari is listening – listening to tones being generated by a computer. When she hears a tone, she’s been trained to press her nose on a pad. Through the bars, researcher JoAnne Simerson gives her a tasty brownish morsel called “omnivore chow.”

Shikari and her twin sister, Chinook, are part of the first-ever study of polar bear hearing. The project began in September at San Diego Zoo.

With the oil and gas industries looking to explore and expand drilling activity in Alaska, researchers want to discover what the noise from such exploration would do to polar bears, particularly females who are pregnant or nursing cubs.

Funding for the study, up to $60,000, comes from BP, formerly known as British Petroleum. The Louisiana-based conservation group Polar Bears International acted as middleman for the grant.

Although the hearing study is being underwritten by the oil industry, researchers say they are not taking sides in the hot issue of expanding oil drilling in Alaska. The findings will be printed in a scientific journal late next year.

Polar bear specialists estimate that upward of 25,000 polar bears roam the Arctic and that about 2,000 of them live near the North Slope oil fields. Since the early 1960s, the government has insisted on a one-mile buffer zone between oil drilling and areas where polar bears congregate.

“It was really just an arbitrary decision to put it at one mile,” said Steven Amstrup, polar bear specialist with the U.S. Geological Survey, also based in Anchorage.

Depending on what the research finds, he said, the one-mile rule may have to be changed.