On the Barents Sea from Bear Island to Tromsø
On this beautiful breezeless day we sailed south on a nudging swell, leaving Svalbard behind. A day at sea gave us time to reflect on our recent experiences in the high latitude archipelago—of polar bears, walruses and whales, of reindeer, seals and sea birds, of pack ice, glaciers and tundra, and of kayaking, hiking and Zodiac cruising in the dramatic icy landscape.
Instead of traveling a straight line from Svalbard’s outlying Bear Island to the Norwegian coast, our ingenious expedition leader and captain selected a more circuitous route following a deepwater contour. And with results! Where the shelf drops off to over half a mile deep we found over a dozen sperm whales throughout the day. What a trip for whales so far this week—we’ve seen throngs of both humpbacks and fin whales, a few minke whales, an exceptionally rare sighting of narwhals in the pack ice, and now sperm whales!
Sperm whales, the largest toothed animal on Earth, will remain at the surface for several minutes snorting uniquely out the left side of their boxy heads before fluking up and heading deep for squidy meals. A whaler’s rule of thumb said that sperm whales breathe once for each minute that they are down; we both confirmed and confuted this theory today as we got on the whales’ rhythm. We watched sequences of their low angular bushy blows before the reward of triangular tails signaling their departure.
Four kittiwakes hitched a ride on one of our Zodiacs for hours, listening intently on the back deck to a slide show on seabirds emanating from an open door to the lounge. With memories of yesterday’s Zodiac ride along the world-class seabird cliffs of Bear Island fresh in our minds, we pondered the wheres and whys of marine avians. Gannets, shearwaters and other new bird species began to arrive today signaling a change of latitude. We entered the jagged shores of northern Norway that had been in view most of the day, piloted in to the town of Tromsø to begin adventures in the famous fjords of Norway.
