The polar bears are the only bears to be considered a marine mammal. They depend on the sea ice that forms and melts every year in the Arctic region. They use the cracks in the ice to hunt seals, their main source of food. But the sea ice is shrinking and disappearing faster than ever before, leaving the polar bears with less time and space to hunt. If this trend continues, polar bears could lose more than 30% of their habitat in the next 45 years. Polar bears are already struggling to survive, as they have a very low success rate in catching prey and a very slow reproduction rate. They cannot afford to lose more of their home. We have to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and protect the Arctic ecosystem before it is too late for the polar bears.
As they are the only bears to be considered marine mammal I decided to challenge myself first and to read a book with the action related to sea, even if are not my favs.

📚 Suggestions of books / authors:
·       You can try “Lucian's True History”, the first ever SF written, in II sec by Lucian of Samosata 

·       “Bonjour tristesse” by Françoise Sagan takes place mostly on a beach. 

·       “A Caribbean Mystery” by Agatha Christie, a murder mystery with Miss Marple at the center. 

·       “The shape of water” by Andrea Camilleri is a mystery from the series  of Inspector Montalbano 

·       “Salt to the Sea” by Ruta Sepetys is settled on the Baltic Sea 

·       "Historia de Mix, de Max y de Mex" by Luis Sepúlveda (a children book, possible not available in English but available in many other languages) 

·       Pirate Princess series by Judy Brown 

·       "Dolmen" by Nicole Jamet and Marie-Anne Le Pezennec 

·       “We Were Liars” by E. Lockhart 

·       “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway 

·       “Moby-Dick or, The Whale” by Herman Melville 

🧸️ About the polar bear: The common name of the bear that lives in the Arctic is polar bear, which was given by Thomas Pennant in A Synopsis of Quadrupeds (1771). Before that, it was called "white bear" in Europe from the 13th to the 18th centuries, and also "ice bear", "sea bear" and "Greenland bear". The Norse called it isbjørn ("ice bear") and hvitebjørn ("white bear"). The Inuit name for it is nanook. The Netsilik cultures have different names for bears depending on their sex and age, such as anguraq for adult males, tattaq for single adult females, arnaluk for pregnant females, hagliaqtug for newborns, namiaq for large adolescents and apitiliit for hibernating bears. The scientific name of the polar bear is Ursus maritimus, which means "sea bear" in Latin.

🌐 NGO protecting  polar bears: Adoptă un urs polar | WWF Romania