Hinlopen Strait
One of the many wonders of traveling in the high arctic during the summer months is realizing that there is no night. The beginning of a new day is only something that we can gauge by our clocks and wrist watches. Thus, this first photo of the day was taken just after our new day had begun—fifteen minutes after midnight. There it is, the famous “midnight sun” beaming at us from above the northern horizon. During the course of our day here in Svalbard, the sun doesn’t rise overhead as we’re accustomed to in temperate latitudes. Instead, it circles around us like the brilliant hand of a giant clock, swinging a full sweep of the horizon during each 24 hours.
As our day officially began, we were cruising southward in Hinlopen Strait with the low sun illuminating a lovely calm sea flecked with icebergs. The glassy water cast perfect mirror reflections of each sculpted piece of ice against the backdrop of the reflected hills beyond. For those who might have gone to sleep before this glorious new day began, they were urged to rouse from their slumbers to view another polar bear. This one was atop a small island where it appeared to be foraging on the eggs of nesting arctic terns. The perturbed birds were aggressively dive-bombing the bear, trying to drive it away. Though this technique often works with arctic foxes and humans, this big bear didn’t seem to care.
During the “civilized” hours of the morning (after breakfast) we went out for hiking and kayaking along a peninsula on the eastern side of Spitsbergen Island at the northern end of Bear Sound. Here the gently sloping tundra revealed vibrant clumps of purple saxifrage in full summer bloom. As we explored the nearshore waters from kayaks and Zodiacs, we were treated to close up views of arctic terns (second photo). These delicate seabirds are renown for their fantastic migrations. As the northern summer comes to a close these slight birds leave the arctic and fly far south to the waters of Antarctica, a one-way journey of 10,000 miles. There they will be enjoying the Antarctic summer while these northern latitudes are huddled in a long winter darkness. The terns will complete their return trip in the spring as they come back to their arctic breeding grounds to nest and raise chicks again. Despite the apparent rigors of such an epic annual flight, during the thirty-plus years that many of these terns survive they will see more of that brilliant sun than those of us residing in lower latitudes ever will.
