The Great Polar Bear Feast

The small coastal Alaskan town of Kaktovik remains a traditional native (Inuit) harbor on Barter island. Once a year, the legal exception on the ban of whaling is exercised, providing foo for the locals who celebrate it with a large communal feast. The whale bones and some blubber are left on a pile, which for months attracts polar bears, an unequaled gathering which became a major tourist attraction in its own right. Due to climate warming, the ice keeps retracting further and re-growing less in winter. Thus the bears face an impossible choice in the ever longer summer whether to follow the ice further north, a swim often exceeding the cubs' energy, or stay on the island and abandon seal hunting until winter, forcing them to wonder into town scavenging and risk being shot as a danger to people.