The Blue Bear

This is the story of Lynn Schooler and Michio Hoshino's obsession with finding the glacier bear, a nearly extinct creature shrouded in legend. Hoshino was killed by a grizzly bear, but Schooler finally photographed the elusive creature alone in the eighth year.

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His body twisted by adolescent scoliosis, Lynn Schooler's soul was scarred from the loneliness of someone who, at an early age, stood "at a strange angle to the rest of the world". He made a life on the slim crescent of remote Alaskan coastline surrounding the city of Juneau, a place where he was least likely to encounter people. In 1990, celebrated Japanese photographer Michio Hoshino hired Schooler to help him shoot a segment on humpback whales in Glacier Bay, and the two formed a profound friendship. Their conversations often revolved around the glacier bear (known as the blue bear for its unique granite-coloured fur), a nearly extinct creature so rare that it is shrouded in legend. Together the two men became obsessed with finding the animal, every year searching through Ice-Age vistas to capture the blue bear on film. Their obsession cost Hoshino his life when he was killed by a grizzly bear. But alone in the eighth year, Schooler finally found and photographed the elusive creature.