Bears, bears, everywhere are Polar bears! It was a hectic day in the land of the ice king. As we approached our intended landing site at Dolorineset, we sighted a large male polar bear climbing the hill to the north. We thought it prudent to leave him alone and continued our ship’s journey to the north.

Shortly after we entered the drifting pack ice we sighted a female polar bear with her one-year-old cub. It must have been a good feeding spot for bears, because we then noticed another larger bear in the near vicinity. The female and cub moved off , but the other bear moved towards us, all the while tasting our scent as it quartered upwind in our direction. We could not maintain position because of wind and current, so the ship moved north again into Freeman Sound.

Stefan, our number one bear spotter, then sighted a female with two large cubs lying down in the middle of a nice large smooth ice floe. We were able to have a good look at the happy bear family before they slowly moved a short distance away from us

We again attempted to land at the northeast end of Freeman Sound , but another bear suddenly appeared on the land as we were unloading the Zodiacs. This persuaded us to return to the warmth of the ship where we were treated to Swedish pancakes and some of Stefan’s excellent photographs of past bear encounters in Svalbard.