Then, when snow or rain wash them onto an ice floe, they darken its surface and thus cause it to melt faster.

FORBES: Soot and CO2 In The Arctic

He was once lost for 11 days after the ice where he was resting broke off from the floe and drifted away.

WSJ: In the Arctic, Sleeping Soundly

Several hours later, in the honey-dipped low light of the midnight sun, a polar bear was spotted on an ice floe, finishing his dinner.

BBC: Life in the fragile, frozen Arctic

One person remains on the floe off Jurmala because he refused to be rescued by helicopter and is waiting for a boat, emergency officials said.

CNN: More than 220 rescued from ice floes off Latvian coast

Among the state-of-the-art special effects included a giant, sparkling polar bear rising from the stadium floor and hovering over performers on a simulated ice floe.

BBC: Winter Olympics start despite luge tragedy

The oil disappears into the interior of each floe, because new ice grows underneath it, so you have an 'oil sandwich' which lasts all through the winter.

BBC: MPs' call to halt Arctic drilling amid safety concerns

All 181 people on the larger floe near the capital city of Riga were removed by boat, and 42 people were rescued by helicopter from the smaller floe off the coast of Jurmala, a nearby seaside resort town.

CNN: More than 220 rescued from ice floes off Latvian coast

Last year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science got into a bit of a pinch when its flagship magazine, Science, was caught in the photoshop with a faked image of a lone polar bear on a tiny ice floe.

FORBES: Drowning Polar Bears And the Return Of Ursus Bogus

What is more, it strikes me as perfectly possible that the overall welfare of a wild seal, suddenly killed on an ice floe, is better than the life endured by an intensively reared farm animal killed on a production line after being driven to an abattoir on a lorry.

ECONOMIST: European politics