Northeast Barentsøya
Somewhere in the Barents Sea five polar bears are still scratching their big white heads after encountering a strange apparition in their fog-shrouded world of floating ice. Just after breakfast, on board the National Geographic Endeavour, trained eyes, straining from the effort of looking through the gray murk, suddenly spotted a bear lying on a small ice pan, near an almost fully consumed seal carcass.
By mid morning the visibility had lifted from 200m to approximately half a mile. Some areas we passed were heavily covered with both annual and some multiyear sea ice, indicating that it had recently been blown down from further north. After a long while of barely seeing even a bird or a seal and re-entering very thick fog, we encountered another bear on an ice pan some 300m directly in front of the ship. Our captain skillfully stopped the vessel as quickly as possible, but the bear moved into the water and swam slowly away from us. While the ship lay still in the water we were surprised to see another bear approach within 30m of our port side, sniffing us out and taking a leisurely look at us. It then decided that we were of no real interest and moved away ahead of the ship coming out on several occasions onto ice pans then again into the water. Another bear was seen swimming near the ship just as we got underway once again. This concentration of bears all in the same small area leads me to speculate that there might have been a carcass nearby, on which they could have been feeding. With the poor visibility we could not investigate this further. Bears can detect smells a long distance away and often are attracted to the kills made by others.
As we entered Freemansundet a long tongue of ice was seen off to our starboard. With the lifting fog we closely examined this jumbled first year ice and were titillated by the distant sighting of a polar bear. A careful approach from down-wind rewarded us with the close up view of a large well-fleshed adult female bear. At first she was sleeping with her head cradled on her icy pillow. As we closed to her she slowly got up and came closer to investigate the ship. We reveled in her powerful beauty and grace as she skipped from floe to floe around the ship before she slowly walked away to pursue more productive bear business. A great ending to another day in the Arctic.
Somewhere in the Barents Sea five polar bears are still scratching their big white heads after encountering a strange apparition in their fog-shrouded world of floating ice. Just after breakfast, on board the National Geographic Endeavour, trained eyes, straining from the effort of looking through the gray murk, suddenly spotted a bear lying on a small ice pan, near an almost fully consumed seal carcass.
By mid morning the visibility had lifted from 200m to approximately half a mile. Some areas we passed were heavily covered with both annual and some multiyear sea ice, indicating that it had recently been blown down from further north. After a long while of barely seeing even a bird or a seal and re-entering very thick fog, we encountered another bear on an ice pan some 300m directly in front of the ship. Our captain skillfully stopped the vessel as quickly as possible, but the bear moved into the water and swam slowly away from us. While the ship lay still in the water we were surprised to see another bear approach within 30m of our port side, sniffing us out and taking a leisurely look at us. It then decided that we were of no real interest and moved away ahead of the ship coming out on several occasions onto ice pans then again into the water. Another bear was seen swimming near the ship just as we got underway once again. This concentration of bears all in the same small area leads me to speculate that there might have been a carcass nearby, on which they could have been feeding. With the poor visibility we could not investigate this further. Bears can detect smells a long distance away and often are attracted to the kills made by others.
As we entered Freemansundet a long tongue of ice was seen off to our starboard. With the lifting fog we closely examined this jumbled first year ice and were titillated by the distant sighting of a polar bear. A careful approach from down-wind rewarded us with the close up view of a large well-fleshed adult female bear. At first she was sleeping with her head cradled on her icy pillow. As we closed to her she slowly got up and came closer to investigate the ship. We reveled in her powerful beauty and grace as she skipped from floe to floe around the ship before she slowly walked away to pursue more productive bear business. A great ending to another day in the Arctic.
