Has Norway created artificial ice pods for Arctic seals to replace their vanishing habitat?

Claim:

Engineers in Norway created floating artificial "ice pods" for seals to replace the animals' vanishing habitat of Arctic sea ice.

Rating:

False

About this rating

On Sept. 24, 2025, a rumor spread online that Norway's engineers had created a novel invention to help Arctic seals: floating "ice pods" that give the animals somewhere to "rest, raise pups, and survive" amid a warming planet and melting sea ice. 

The rumor spread on X, Facebook and Instagram. Many posts claimed the pods were made from "biodegradable, non-toxic materials," had grooves to "keep seals from slipping" and carried sensors to monitor seal populations. The posts often included an image appearing to show seals sitting on top of one of these supposed ice pods, which featured a flag presumably meant to represent Norway.

Based on a Google search, no reputable news reports of artificial ice pods created by Norwegian engineers existed as of this writing, and if this supposed marvel of engineering happened, there almost certainly would be coverage of it. Furthermore, the image appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence. Thus, we rate this claim false. 

The image of the fake ice pods spreading online included a tag: "fb@cronus.my." A search for that username led to a Facebook page with more than 200,000 followers called Cronus. Cronus is listed on Facebook as a "digital creator," not a news site. Many of the page's posts followed a specific template: a wildlife story or supposed fact, accompanied with an image containing hallmarks of AI generation. 

Snopes reached out to Cronus to ask for more information about the sourcing or creation of their "ice pod" story and awaits a response. 

There were several red flags indicating someone used AI to make the image of seals on artificial ice pods. Upon a closer look, several of the seals appeared to have unusual anatomy, such as missing heads. Furthermore, the supposed Norwegian flag on the ice pod does not look like an actual flag from Norway. The real national flag of Norway does not have white diagonal lines, and the junction of the central cross is off to the side, not in the middle. 

Issues with the image include seals that don't look like seals and a misrepresentation of Norway's national flag.  (Cronos/Snopes Illustration)

A Google Images search for artificial ice pods for seals returned no relevant results aside from the AI-generated image above, further indicating that the story had been fabricated. 

While the "ice pod" innovation did not exist as of this writing, the loss of sea ice because of climate change is a real issue faced by both people and animals in the Arctic. However, a 2024 Arctic "report card" by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that all four seal populations in the Pacific Arctic have large, healthy populations and have adapted to a warming ocean by changing their diet and moving farther north.

"The change in diet has not, so far, led to a long-term decline in seal health," the report found. "Still, Arctic sea ice remains crucial to seal population health. Seal mothers nurse their pups on the ice. If sea ice fails to remain stable, nursing periods shrink, and fewer pups are likely to survive."

Fake ice platforms have been floated before as a way to help the Arctic's polar bears, which are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

But according to Polar Bears International, a conservation organization, "sea ice is far more than a platform: It's an integral part of the Arctic ecosystem." That's because sea ice helps create an environment for microorganisms necessary for the Arctic food chain. The organization also noted that given the sheer scale of open water as a result of melting ice in the Arctic, the "effort and cost to manufacture and deploy any kind of alternate platform" would simply be unreasonable.

This isn't the first futuristic-but-fake invention associated with Norway we've investigated. For example, we previously looked into whether images authentically showed a floating greenhouse developed by Norwegian scientists called "Ocean Bloom."