Southern Spitsbergen & Edgeøya Regions
Isbjørn! The National Geographic Endeavour rounded the southern tip of Spitsbergen last night and edged up bright and early to the fast ice of Isbukta (Ice Bay) on the southeast coast. Many early risers set their alarms to get up to the bridge by 5:30am with eager hopes to start spotting polar bears on the fast ice. Within the first half hour of gazing through binoculars, our first polar bear was miraculously spotted four miles in the distance. The figure slowly moved in front of a distant glacier headwall amongst large chunks of ice.... or so we could tell! While it didn’t appear to be much more than a yellowish dot on a sea of white, our powerful spotting scopes promised us otherwise, so we took their word for it. Not bad. It still counts as a bear for the books, so we'll take it!
Fortunately, however, as we strained with wind-teary eyes to keep this far flung polar bear in focus (if not in sight), it wasn't long before our lookout in the Crow's Nest spotted another polar bear just on ahead. This bear was resting on the edge of the fast ice, and thankfully, it proved to be far more obliging to us and our hopes of getting some up-close views! The captain slowly nudged our ship closer in its direction. We were delighted to see the bear rise up and start poking his way right towards us. The massive, white-golden fella lumbered along over the broken ice ridges, sniffing at our scent with his powerful olfactory senses and warily trying to figure what we were about. He came within 120 meters of us, offering an extremely close look at his dramatic features. Sized to be about 10 feet long, his neck was huge, his face scarred, his paws enormous, and his yellow coat immensely thick. We could spot a tag on his ear and a big number on his rump, indicating that he was recently tagged by the Norwegian Polar Institute for study. Despite his relatively recent familiarity with a tranquilizer dart, he seemed fairly unperturbed by our presence as he sniffed us out and then continued on his way. It was a joy to watch this legend of the North rumble on by, and at last we turned the ship again to continue looking for more bears.
Lunch came and went, and by early afternoon, one of the Lindblad naturalists had used his seemingly Hubble Telescope-like vision to spot our next set of polar bears - this time a mama bear and her cub. We quietly crept forward. Through our spotting scopes, we could see the little one running around its mother while she warily led her cub away. This was sign enough for us not to get too close, so we kept a large distance and backed off quietly once everyone had a good viewing through the scopes. Another distant, unreachable, "dot-on-the-ice" bear was also spotted from this site, but the National Geographic Endeavour turned around and began pushing back south through the ice.
As we continued on through the flows of broken sea ice, we spotted two more polar bears for the day - one meandering the flows on its own, and another caught by surprise swimming in the open water. This tallied seven polar bear sightings in one day! Quite a terrific count to keep us eagerly running up to the bridge and quarter deck with our cameras and binoculars primed and ready.
