Can polar bears adapt?

Susan Janet Crockford is a Canadian zoologist, author, and blogger, who argued that either the subsequent seal shortage or declining ice levels was the cause of an approximately 40% decrease in polar bear numbers in the Beaufort Sea area. Crockford suggests that the decline in the polar bear population was in fact caused by unusually thick spring ice that year, a recurring trend every decade for the past century, which led to a shortage of their preferred prey, ringed seals. She thinks that the polar bear can adapt to the reducing number of ice in the Antarctic.