They are not averse to freezing cold, but even polar bears like to have a roof over their heads. On an island off the Siberian coast, Russian photographer Dmitry Koch encounters a pack of polar bears that have settled in an abandoned weather station.
The two of them look through the window, as if they have lived there for years. Lay comfortably in the sun, or take a trip along abandoned oil drums. Russian wildlife photographer Dmitry Hut shows polar bears like you’ve probably never seen them before.
In September last year, Koch took a sailboat to Russia’s Wrangel Island, a traditional sanctuary for polar bears, to photograph the white beasts. But that turned out to be a setback: the bears sent their cat. When bad weather was also forecast on the way back, the expedition seemed to turn into a fiasco. “The captain decided to moor at Kollyuchin, where we were sheltering from the storm,” Kokh wrote on his website. “In Soviet times, that island was known for its weather station. It closed its doors in 1992, but the now abandoned village still exists.”
To his surprise, he suddenly saw something moving in one of the buildings. There are no meteorologists, but a group of about twenty polar bears, mostly male. Then the females and their offspring roamed around the beaches again.
“The storm made it very dangerous to go to the beach, so I took pictures with a drone that made a little noise, so as not to scare the animals,” Koch writes. The result effortlessly exceeded his expectations, as the contrast between the proud animals and a ramshackle weather station creates an almost surreal atmosphere. On Instagram, he talks about “a very beautiful parallel world”.
Although it also indicates that something needs to be done urgently about the environmental disaster threatening the island. “There are millions of empty barrels of oil on the Russian coast,” he told DIY Photography. “In Soviet times, it was customary to get rid of it. In the meantime, there are plans for a clean-up and we will see what happens. “
More work dmitrykokh.com And on Instagram: @bombs lord
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