It was September 2017. Cameraman Jamie McPherson and I had already crossed 12 time zones as we arrived by charter plane to an isolated Russian goldmine in the heart of Siberia.
We loaded our gear into a slightly worse-for-wear Mi-8 helicopter, a huge beast that requires three pilots just to stay airborne, and flew the final short leg to base camp – an abandoned town on the Chukotka Coast.
We were here for the Netflix series Our Planet, planning to film Pacific walrus at a known coastal haulout site. We were to team up with Russian biologist Anatoly Kochnev, who has been studying these animals since the 1970s.
Two-thirds of the world population of Pacific walrus migrate along the Chukotka coastline in the summer. Historically, they would rest on land in years of poor sea-ice, which was about once a decade. However, in the past 20 years they have been coming onto land almost every year.
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The increase in global temperatures due to climate change has resulted in Arctic sea ice retreating much further north during the summer months. Instead of hauling out on the ice between feeding trips to the sea floor, the animals must now swim 50-120km to the shore.
On our first day of filming, we set out along a thin peninsula where the walrus had been seen hauling out. As we approached, we were met with a horrifying sight. The shore was lined with the carcasses of hundreds of dead animals.
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Anatoly was quick to explain. The walrus had come ashore to rest, but with space on the beach rapidly taken up, any latecomers had been forced to navigate their way up the cliffs. When the time came for them to return to the sea, they were unable to find a safe path down and plummeted to their deaths.
We could not believe what we were seeing. It was utterly tragic.
The sheer quantity of dead walrus had not gone unnoticed by the local polar bears, which have learned to aggregate here for the easy pickings. On some days, more than 20 bears have been seen in the area. So it was that our walrus shoot quickly became a lesson in working alongside one of the most powerful predators on the planet.
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The slight health-and-safety concern we faced was that in Russia, it is illegal to carry a gun near a polar bear, or to shoot one. Our defence, therefore, comprised a few bangers, a long, pointy stick and the tried-and-tested confidence of Anatoly – who, to be fair, had survived decades of polar bears inconveniently getting in the way of his walrus studies.
As we surveyed the shocking scene, alert for polar bears, Anatoly explained the three stages to a polar bear attack. He kept it succinct:
1. They approach fast, head down;
2. They are at the end of the stick, trying to bite you;
3. They are biting you.
“Understood?” he said, expectantly. “Awesome! Let’s carry on!”
Needless to say, we weren’t remotely reassured by Anatoly’s stick technique, even though he assured us that it was effective, given he had never got to Stage 3.
We just had to trust his expertise.
We soon settled into the rhythm of the place. Each day, before we left for the peninsula, Anatoly would carefully observe and assess the bear dynamics. How many were there? What age? Males or females? Any cubs? He would then determine whether it was safe to venture out.
For the first week, there were no incoming walrus, but on day 8, several hundred came ashore overnight. Anatoly carried out his checks and decided it was safe to film. We slowly made our way down to the beach, careful to stay downwind. It was vital we didn’t spook the walrus, as a stampede could result in these huge animals crushing one another while attempting to get back to the safety of the water.
We settled into a good position, unnoticed by the walrus. Jamie sat cross-legged on the ground and started filming the animals getting out of the sea.
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The walrus might have been oblivious, but our presence had not gone unnoticed by a curious polar bear cub, who stood watching us. Its mother appeared and tried to summon him, but we were apparently far too interesting to ignore. As the youngster drew closer, the mother had no choice but to take charge. She caught up with her cub and overtook it.
As she did so, her demeanour changed. She had switched into protection mode. It’s a textbook situation - never get in the way of a mother protecting her young! We quickly threw some bangers to ward her off, but she didn’t take a blind bit of notice.
It is in moments like these that news headlines flash through your mind “Netflix film crew eaten by polar bear!”. Was this really how it was all going to end?
Everything happened so fast, there wasn’t time to think or panic. Our fate was at the whim of the protective mother bear coming straight for us.
Anatoly stepped forward, stick at the ready. He looked very small in that moment. Jamie, still filming cross-legged on the ground, only looked up when the bear blocked his shot. She was now just 3m away.
The key to preventing an attack is to get the bear to ‘snap out of it’ and reassess the situation. Polar bears often become laser-focused on a threat and won’t stop until they’ve eliminated it.
We had to break its stride, or one of us could be dead within seconds.
Jamie picked up a pebble and aimed for the bear’s neck. As luck would have it, it struck just as our last banger went off. She jolted at the impact and changed position, as if having second thoughts. We held our breath, hearts pounding, frozen to the spot.
She held our gaze for another minute or so, then apparently decided this motley crew of humans and their stick weren’t a threat. She retreated and plodded off to find her cub, and the pair went to scavenge among the dead walrus.
We took a collective huge breath of relief and calmed our nerves with a hot tea. We continued the shoot, intensely relieved we had not had to see out Anatoly’s three-stage attack theory, nor implement the pointy stick. But the memory of how close we came to this powerful predator will never leave me.
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Top photo by Sophie Lanfear
