Bear snacks on US sub (NOT the Jared kind!)

news.com.au ^ | May 29, 2003 | Scott Jenkins

[fightinJAG]

Bear snacks on US sub By Scott Jenkins May 29, 2003

IT'S not often a submariner would see a polar bear in his periscope, but that's exactly what happened recently in Prudehoe Bay off the northern coast of Alaska.

The USS Connecticut meets the bear

During training exercises near the North Pole, the submarine USS Connecticut poked its sail and fin through the ice.

An officer turned on the scope's camera and this bizarre image of a bear trying to eat the sub's rear fin was the result.

The bear played with the fin for half an hour, thinking the giant object was food.

After realising his find was inedible, he decided to do the natural bear thing and attack.

But the assault lasted only a few minutes and the damage to the sub's fin was described as being minor.

The structure wasn't designed as a polar bear snack, but life's like that sometimes.

More than 20,000 polar bears live in Arctic waters.

They normally reside on pack ice or ice floes and usually prey on seals.

But this curious fellow couldn't believe his luck when the rudder made its appearance.

US and Russian subs have been operating under the Arctic for more than half a century.

In 1958, the USS Nautilus passed under the Pole for the first time, and in 1962 two nuclear subs surfaced there. All of this activity was designed to prove that ballistic missiles could be launched from the Pole.

The subs have also measured the thickness of the Arctic crust using sonar technology, and the ever-decreasing thickness has caused major problems for the bear population.

Some of them have been forced to come ashore earlier because of the Arctic's longer warm season.

The USS Connecticut is one of newest US submarines and it's unlikely that encounters with polar bears were included in the operations manual.

Submariners have seen polar bears in the past, but this is probably the first time the bear saw the sub first and mistook it for a huge chunk of bear food.

In a strange twist, to be filed under "It Could Only Happen in America", the USS Connecticut and its crew may end up with legal problems over the run-in with the bear.

The US Marine Mammal Protection Act makes it illegal to cause disruption to any animal's normal marine behaviour.

And this includes interrupting their feeding patterns.

Because the sub didn't immediately return below the surface, its actions could be determined to be "disruptive".

Quite unbearable, really.

The Daily Telegraph

[ozaukeemom]

ping!

[Normal4me]

Hold muh Bear!

[dighton]

[amused]

Hopefully Fox will have this material for viewing in their next "Zoological Study of Aggressive Behavior in the Animal Kingdom, both Wild and Domestic"

[etcetera]

Aren't subs kind of encased in rubber? So the bear thought the fin kind of looked like a seal?

[Az Joe]

That was no bear, that was an old bubblehead coming off a drunk!

[fightinJAG]

Hey, you know what, I didn't know how to post the pic that was with the article---look over dare, it's a bear, ware?, over dare!

It was a big ole polar bear, bigger'n life!

[wku man]

At least it wasn't a moose.

Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!

[fightinJAG]

Have to check with the bear psychologist on that one.

[fightinJAG]

Or the next animal reality show.

[amused]

Or the next animal reality show.

Poor bear would probably get voted off ;-)

[fightinJAG]

Where is PETA, anyway?

[Yo-Yo]

The subs have also measured the thickness of the Arctic crust using sonar technology, and the ever-decreasing thickness has caused major problems for the bear population.

Some of them have been forced to come ashore earlier because of the Arctic's longer warm season.

They just HAD to get in a jab at Global Warming, didn't they.

[amused]

Where is ****, anyway?

Ssssshhhhhh don't even mention that name....if you type it 3 times they will appear to wreck havoc.

[hchutch]

Memorandum

To: CO, USS CONNECTICUT
From: CINCPAC
CC: All Submarine COs, CINCLANT, SECDEF

Subject: New Procedures in case of bear attack.

1. Use of deadly force is hereby authorized to prevent damage to the acoustic characteristics of the vessel under your command.

2. In event deadly force is employed, periscope cameras are to be turned off.

3. Appropriate measures to ensure OPSEC in implementation of this directive are hereby mandated.

r/s

CINCPAC

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

bear or bear

[Poohbah]

Actually, it's COMPACFLT (Bush said last year that he's the one and only CINC).

[mylife]

Saw this a few weeks back. Although polar bears are one of (probably) the most fierce carnivores on the planet...I bet he lost to that Sub!
HY 80 Steel is gonna give him one Helluva Tooth Ache!!

[SW6906]

"The subs have also measured the thickness of the Arctic crust using sonar technology, and the ever-decreasing thickness has caused major problems for the bear population."

Wasn't this all disproved some years back? I thought they determined that the "thinning" of the ice pack was really due to the shifting of the ice and there really wasn't any thinning to speak of.

Or something like that. I don't have time to search for the article right now, maybe later.....