Bradt Wildlife Guide: The Arctic A Guide to Coastal Wildlife

About this book

This extensively updated fifth edition of Bradt Wildlife Guide: The Arctic is an engagingly written and beautifully illustrated full-colour guidebook to some of the world's most exciting wildlife. Designed with expedition-cruise passengers in mind, it is an ideal companion both on board and ashore, providing fascinating accounts of the most likely animals and plants to be seen – from polar bears and beluga whales to snowy owls and snow buttercups.

Only a small number of hardy and evocative creatures – including narwhals, walruses and Ross's gulls – call the Arctic their year-round home. But come summer, the region explodes with life as plankton and plants flourish to support a massive population of fish, seabirds and whales, all taking advantage of seasonal abundance before retreating south to avoid the ice. For these few short months of almost endless daylight, the coastal Arctic – from Greenland to Svalbard, Alaska to the Bering Sea – offers a parade of wildlife delights.

On a typical Arctic expedition cruise, you might marvel at walruses lounging on rocks or scan for harp seals bobbing in icy water. Watch Arctic foxes sniffing out goose eggs or gawp at the torrent of little auks flooding to cliffside breeding colonies. Keep your eyes peeled for polar bears and ivory gulls on ice floes, for the bushy blow that heralds a humpback whale or for a flash of white that signifies a beluga whale. Packed with fascinating natural histories that bring to life star species, and freshly updated throughout, The Arctic is a timely celebration of polar nature in an era when climate change is profoundly affecting extreme northern latitudes.

Written by the late Tony Soper, expedition leader and founder of the BBC Natural History Unit, illustrated with full-colour watercolour paintings from award-winning wildlife artist Dan Powell, and updated by naturalist and award-winning travel writer James Lowen, this new edition is packed with fascinating insights into the natural history of Arctic wildlife, its narrative bringing to life the creatures that visitors are likely to encounter. An eminently portable guidebook, Bradt Wildlife Guide: The Arctic is the ideal companion for anyone exploring the far north.

Contents

- Introduction
- Exploitation and Conservation
- Plants
- Invertebrates
- Fish
- Birds
- Terrestrial Mammals
- Marine Mammals
- Bering Sea Nature

Appendices:
      Guidelines for Arctic visitors
      Glossary of snow and ice
      Further reading
      Species names in other languages
Index
Envoi

Customer Reviews

Biography

Tony Soper was a naturalist film-maker who explored the coastal waters of Alaska, northern Canada, Greenland, Svalbard and Arctic Siberia north to the pole, as lecturer and expedition leader on icebreakers and ice-hardened vessels. His enthusiasm for wildlife was shared by a huge number of cruise guests for over twenty years. His Bradt guide, The Arctic, which has run to five editions, aims to answer some of their questions! Soper’s other books include The Northeast Passage and Bradt’s Northwest Passage. Tony Soper died in September 2024.

Updater James Lowen has been immersed in all aspects of natural history since he was able to walk, and is now a fully-fledged nature writer, editor, guide and photographer. James has written 17 books about wildlife and travel, landing two Travel Guidebook of the Year awards (plus two ‘shortlistings’), a Nautilus Book Silver Award and a longlisting for the 2022 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing. A longstanding tour leader in Antarctica, South America and Europe, he has also worked as a naturalist guide on a polar expedition-cruise ship exploring Svalbard, where he adored pointing out seals, cetaceans and unusual seabirds to passengers – then inspiring them with tales of the creatures’ natural history.

Illustrator Dan Powell has been a wildlife artist since graduating from Dyfed College of Art in Wales in 1983. He was honoured as British Birds Illustrator of the Year in 1996. His work has appeared in numerous books and journals, including many publications by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, on subjects ranging from parrots to dragonflies. He is happiest when out sketching in the field – especially when stuck in the middle of a bog.