Monacobreen, Liefdefjorden, North Spitsbergen
Yesterday we boarded the National Geographic Endeavour in Longyearbyen, the largest settlement of the island archipelago of Svalbard. Our two previous trips to Svalbard this season have gone to the south – this time, in the words of our Captain Lief Skog, it is “North, north, north!” The last arm of the Gulf Stream passes up the west coast of the island of Spitsbergen, bringing navigable water far to the north. During the night we rounded the northwest corner of Spitsbergen, and in mid-morning we entered Woodfjord. Our morning presentation was delayed when the first polar bear of our trip was spotted lying on a small island. As we approached, it stood and strolled regally along the shore, giving us excellent views. A second encounter, this time of two sow bears and their one-year-old cubs, followed the presentation.
Over lunch we turned into a side arm of Woodfjord to reach Monacobreen (breen = “the glacier”.) This and surrounding Albert I Land was named for Albert I Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco, who was a great supporter of oceanographic research in the polar regions. His chart of the terminus of Monacobreen in 1906 gives us a baseline from which to document 100 years of glacier retreat. Following a close approach to the glacier in the National Geographic Endeavour (to a location that was under the ice when the ship was last here only two years ago) we bundled up and boarded Zodiacs to cruise along the face of the glacier. The overcast skies brought out the blue color of the ice. We stopped to admire pieces of ice calved from the glacier. Some were clear like the finest crystal; others were full of bubbles – samples of the earth’s atmosphere at the time the snow fell in the mountains above, accumulated, and was changed into ice. We listened to the sounds of the ice: the crystal chimes of myriad collisions of brash ice; the snap, crackle, and pop of air bubbles releasing their contents back into the atmosphere; and the occasional roar of calving as ice completed its journey from land to sea causing waves that rocked our small boats. Black guillemots, glaucous gulls, and kittiwakes posed for our cameras … or sometimes they left just as we were about to click. Beautiful all white ivory gulls – the phantoms of the northern ice (their genus name, Pagophila, means “ice-loving”) – coursed in front of the vertical glacier face, giving us an impression of scale that was otherwise hard to grasp.
The rapid retreat of the glacier was made vivid when we saw an island that does not appear on any chart because it has appeared from beneath the glacier within the past few years. It is still covered by a dome of ice that could only have been left behind as the glacier retreated. We can be confident that no human feet have ever stepped onto this island. The honor of being the first to touch the island fell to two of our younger guests, and it was duly named EmilyandClaudiasöya.
In the early evening we crossed the 80th parallel in our quest to reach the Arctic pack ice. We were within 600 nautical miles (= 690 statute miles) on the North Pole, the northern axis of our spinning globe.
Yesterday we boarded the National Geographic Endeavour in Longyearbyen, the largest settlement of the island archipelago of Svalbard. Our two previous trips to Svalbard this season have gone to the south – this time, in the words of our Captain Lief Skog, it is “North, north, north!” The last arm of the Gulf Stream passes up the west coast of the island of Spitsbergen, bringing navigable water far to the north. During the night we rounded the northwest corner of Spitsbergen, and in mid-morning we entered Woodfjord. Our morning presentation was delayed when the first polar bear of our trip was spotted lying on a small island. As we approached, it stood and strolled regally along the shore, giving us excellent views. A second encounter, this time of two sow bears and their one-year-old cubs, followed the presentation.
Over lunch we turned into a side arm of Woodfjord to reach Monacobreen (breen = “the glacier”.) This and surrounding Albert I Land was named for Albert I Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco, who was a great supporter of oceanographic research in the polar regions. His chart of the terminus of Monacobreen in 1906 gives us a baseline from which to document 100 years of glacier retreat. Following a close approach to the glacier in the National Geographic Endeavour (to a location that was under the ice when the ship was last here only two years ago) we bundled up and boarded Zodiacs to cruise along the face of the glacier. The overcast skies brought out the blue color of the ice. We stopped to admire pieces of ice calved from the glacier. Some were clear like the finest crystal; others were full of bubbles – samples of the earth’s atmosphere at the time the snow fell in the mountains above, accumulated, and was changed into ice. We listened to the sounds of the ice: the crystal chimes of myriad collisions of brash ice; the snap, crackle, and pop of air bubbles releasing their contents back into the atmosphere; and the occasional roar of calving as ice completed its journey from land to sea causing waves that rocked our small boats. Black guillemots, glaucous gulls, and kittiwakes posed for our cameras … or sometimes they left just as we were about to click. Beautiful all white ivory gulls – the phantoms of the northern ice (their genus name, Pagophila, means “ice-loving”) – coursed in front of the vertical glacier face, giving us an impression of scale that was otherwise hard to grasp.
The rapid retreat of the glacier was made vivid when we saw an island that does not appear on any chart because it has appeared from beneath the glacier within the past few years. It is still covered by a dome of ice that could only have been left behind as the glacier retreated. We can be confident that no human feet have ever stepped onto this island. The honor of being the first to touch the island fell to two of our younger guests, and it was duly named EmilyandClaudiasöya.
In the early evening we crossed the 80th parallel in our quest to reach the Arctic pack ice. We were within 600 nautical miles (= 690 statute miles) on the North Pole, the northern axis of our spinning globe.
