A person in Norway's remote Svalbard archipelago has been fined 50,000 kroner ($5,260.15) after using a vessel's foghorn to wake a sleeping polar bear, in an incident that authorities said amounted to an unnecessary disturbance of protected wildlife.
The unidentified individual was aboard a vessel sailing through a fjord in northwestern Svalbard earlier this month when passengers reportedly spotted a polar bear resting on land. Instead of leaving the animal undisturbed, someone on the vessel sounded the ship's foghorn, startling the bear and causing it to move elsewhere.
