In search of a white black bear

A group of 9 international adventurers travelled to one of the largest rainforests in the world to find one of its rarest animals, the black bear with white fur, the spirit bear.

The travellers, three from Canada, two from the United States, two from Australia and two from Curaçao, boarded the tall ship, Maple Leaf on a cruise through the waterways of the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, Canada. After four days, they had "drifted beside humpback whales, slipped into sheltered coves to scramble up salmon streams, dropped anchor off beaches laced with wolf tracks and launched Zodiacs [to get] so close to sea lions that [they] choke[d] on their pungent stink" according to Mark Hume, a fellow passenger and reporter for Globe and Mail, but they hadn't seen one bear.

Not seeing a bear in a 6.4-million hectare Rainforest called "Great Bear" had some of the passengers feeling ripped off, but on day 5, the drought turned into a flood. On a small platform looking into a salmon filled stream, the passengers saw a small black bear come out of the forest, pull a fish from the water and eat the brains and eggs.

A little later, a spirit bear made it's way into the stream to feed on some salmon. It was so close to the group they could see red blood on it's white fur.

Actually a black bear, the spirit bear, also known as the kermode or ghost bear is not albino, it's white fur is a result of a genetic trait that is possibly due to a recessive gene, or could be due to a result of a concentration of a certain gene in a given area.

Scientists estimate there are only 1,200 black and white kermode bears from the northern tip of Vancouver Island  to the Alaska panhandle, and the white black bear in the stream was so captivating, that when black bears started coming out of every nook and cranny to feed in the stream, they were largely ignored. It was a scene where even the tour leader and captain of the Maple Leaf, Kevin Smith considered a rare priveledge

“I know I’m supposed to be, ‘Oh, it’s always like this.’" Smith said, "but it just isn’t.”

The group had taken a risk and put themselves in a spot where they might get some adventure and were handsomely rewarded.