Svalbard tourist fined €4,560 for waking sleeping polar bear with boat horn
A polar bear was sleeping peacefully on the shore of a remote Arctic fjord until someone on a passing boat […]
A tourist in Svalbard has been fined €4,560 for wakening a sleeping polar bear with the ship's horn. The incident occurred in August when the vessel passed near Lomfjorden, which separates two of Svalbard's largest islands. A polar bear was resting on the shore when someone decided to activate the horn, causing the bear to wake up and move away.
Fellow passengers reported the action to Svalbard's governor. The bear's wake-up call was intentional, not accidental, and thus violated Svalbard's wildlife protection rules. The perpetrator was found guilty and fined NOK 50,000 (€4,560) for breaching Section 30a of the Svalbard Environmental Act, which prohibits unnecessary disturbance of polar bears.
The fine has already been paid. In 2025, the rule was tightened, requiring a minimum distance of 300 meters from a polar bear, increasing to 500 meters from March 1 to June 30. Around 300 polar bears reside on Svalbard year-round, part of a larger population of around 3,000 in the Barents Sea region, which is shared with Russia.
The Arctic warming has made survival harder for these animals, and the Norwegian authorities have made deliberate disturbance of them a criminal offense. Svalbard has become a popular destination for adventure tourists, with cruise operators offering wildlife sightings. The authorities now treat any deliberate disturbance of bears or settlements by them very seriously.
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