A tourist has been fined £4,000 for using a ship’s foghorn to wake a sleeping polar bear on a remote Norwegian archipelago.
The person, who was not named, sounded the device while sailing near the shore of Lomfjorden, northeastern Svalbard.
The sleeping bear woke up startled and fled.
Under local regulations in the region, “it is forbidden to needlessly disturb, attract or pursue a polar bear”.
Lars Fause, the governor, said the vessel’s occupants “are said to have spotted a polar bear sleeping on land”, adding: “A person on board then used the ship’s foghorn, waking the animal, which moved to another location.”
Polar bears can weigh up to 1,000kg and are the world’s largest land predators. They are one of a handful of animals that will actively hunt and kill humans.
There are roughly 300 polar bears on Svalbard, 620 miles from the North Pole, and more on the surrounding sea ice. They have been a protected species on the islands since 1972.
The Svalbard Environment Act stipulates that all traffic on the archipelago must take place in a way that does not lead to unnecessary disturbance of local wildlife – which includes polar bears, seals, whales, reindeer and arctic foxes.
In 2024, a tourist was fined 11,500 kroner (£900) for getting too close to a walrus, which often slumbers on the shoreline of the territory’s winding fjords.
It is also illegal to leave any of Svalbard’s three settlements without a firearm because of the threat posed by polar bears.
But the use of such weapons is highly regulated. It must be reported if a polar bear is killed, and an investigation will be carried out into the circumstances.
In 2015, Czech tourists were fined £800 after a polar bear broke into their tent and tried to maul them in the middle of the night.
They shot the beast three times with a revolver, but were penalised because they failed to put a member of their group on “polar bear watch”.
“They had not put in place the necessary safeguards. There was only one tripwire that was set too high and the bear went under it. Nor did they have a polar bear watch at the time,” Jens Olav Sæter, Svalbard’s assistant governor, told local newspaper Svalbardposten.
The deaths of many polar bears could be avoided if people took greater safety precautions, he added.
In 2011, Eton schoolboy Horatio Chapple, 17, an aspiring medical student, died after being mauled by a polar bear on the archipelago.
The 7ft, 40st bear rampaged through his camp, ignoring faulty traps laid to keep animals away.
By the time it was shot, after the expedition leader struggled with his weapon’s safety catch, the teenager was dead and others were left seriously injured.