Dear MARMAM members, Mechtild and Wolfgang Opel, published authors living in both Nova Scotia and Berlin, are starting a new project about polar bears. Their recent trips to the Canadian Arctic brought them in close contact with bears but they have few photos of the quality required for publication. They are searching for contributions of photographs of polar bears (high resolution) from the MARMAM community. For those of you with photographs to generously offer for use in their German language book, you will get full credit, and, by request, a hardcopy of the book (attention – this book will be in German!) About the book: - It is an “everything that you always wanted to know“ approach to the polar bear. The text will include facts and figures from anatomy to ecology, with all the newest data, but will also explore other aspects including the human-bear realtionship over the centuries. They will present the Inuit perspective, the spiritual connections, the meanings of hunting, the myths and legends, the European view, sport hunting, zoo keeping, circus performing, cuddly pets and coke commercials, and include true accounts of close encounters with polar bears in the wild. It will really be a holistic representation of the species. The number of printed copies will be 2000 or 3000. Mechtild and Wolfgang have been working in other fields including travel writing, history – for instance Germans in the Arctic, Labrador history including Moravians, and examples of their work include: Kanadas maritime Provinzen mit Newfoundland and Labrador (2008/2011), Das Kanada-Lesebuch (2013). You can check out their blog at: http://trimaris.blogsport.de Those with photos willing to share, please contact Mechtild and Wolfgang at: mechtild.opel@trimaris.de Shoshanah R. Jacobs, PhDwww.shoexpeditions.com