Sørkapp & Isbukta, Spitsbergen, Svalbard
Yesterday we flew into Spitsbergen, the main island of Svalbard. Dark mountains with their flanks streaked with snow, and steel-grey fjords were visible from the plane as we landed. After a brief tour of the main settlement, Longyearbyen, we were ferried out to the National Geographic Endeavour by Zodiac, passing two icebreakers en route. One, the blue and cream Odin, was carrying the Crown Prince and Princess of Norway, causing great excitement in this tiny Arctic community, a remote outpost which few Norwegians have ever visited. We were welcomed onboard by Anders, our Hotel Manager and Expedition Leader Tom Ritchie, for a welcome reunion with our luggage, last seen in Oslo.
This morning at 0625, we woke to the sound of Tom's voice: "Mother and Cub on the starboard side". Those of us, who made it from deep slumber to top deck in five minutes flat, were rewarded by the sight of two nimble polar bears moving across a precarious sheet of shifting ice floes tipping and jostling in long ocean swells. Within minutes the wind had risen to a full gale, so we moved out into open water to leave the dancing bears among the drifting ice. We were off the exposed southern cape (Sørkapp); it was time to find some shelter, so we turned north with an escort of fulmars weaving in and out of the breaking spray. As we followed the edge of the pack ice, small groups of harp seals were leaping like dolphins ahead of the ship, then bobbing like black corks among the white and blue ice. Two beside the ship swam along on their backs, tilting their heads up out of the water to stare at us, and then dove. Within minutes of our seal sighting, one eagle-eyed guest on the bridge found our third bear: a lone adult loping through the jumbled ice up ahead. This time most folk managed to squeeze onto the bridge to have a look, leaving the hardiest souls out on deck to experience the full glory of the Arctic summer: howling wind, subzero temperatures and freezing spray.
We followed the pack ice edge, scanning and scanning again for bears. Distant dark lumps: ice. Moving white shapes: ice. Possible yellow blobs: dirty ice. However, the more we looked, the more we saw: ringed seals sprawled on ice pans, chevrons of guillemots flying from their inland cliff nest sites to feed in the more sheltered bays, a glaucous gull picking at a dead auk, and that immaculate icon of the Arctic, the ivory gull, pure white against the buckled blue and gray sea ice. We dragged ourselves away reluctantly to attend the Captain's Welcome Dinner, but before we got our just desserts, the Captain himself called us back up for Bear No.4! Stefan had found a bear which left the ice and to our amazement, swam strongly out to sea, scattering guillemots before it. Half an hour later, it was still swimming, heading for distant ice on the horizon! No wonder they call it Ursus maritimus.
Yesterday we flew into Spitsbergen, the main island of Svalbard. Dark mountains with their flanks streaked with snow, and steel-grey fjords were visible from the plane as we landed. After a brief tour of the main settlement, Longyearbyen, we were ferried out to the National Geographic Endeavour by Zodiac, passing two icebreakers en route. One, the blue and cream Odin, was carrying the Crown Prince and Princess of Norway, causing great excitement in this tiny Arctic community, a remote outpost which few Norwegians have ever visited. We were welcomed onboard by Anders, our Hotel Manager and Expedition Leader Tom Ritchie, for a welcome reunion with our luggage, last seen in Oslo.
This morning at 0625, we woke to the sound of Tom's voice: "Mother and Cub on the starboard side". Those of us, who made it from deep slumber to top deck in five minutes flat, were rewarded by the sight of two nimble polar bears moving across a precarious sheet of shifting ice floes tipping and jostling in long ocean swells. Within minutes the wind had risen to a full gale, so we moved out into open water to leave the dancing bears among the drifting ice. We were off the exposed southern cape (Sørkapp); it was time to find some shelter, so we turned north with an escort of fulmars weaving in and out of the breaking spray. As we followed the edge of the pack ice, small groups of harp seals were leaping like dolphins ahead of the ship, then bobbing like black corks among the white and blue ice. Two beside the ship swam along on their backs, tilting their heads up out of the water to stare at us, and then dove. Within minutes of our seal sighting, one eagle-eyed guest on the bridge found our third bear: a lone adult loping through the jumbled ice up ahead. This time most folk managed to squeeze onto the bridge to have a look, leaving the hardiest souls out on deck to experience the full glory of the Arctic summer: howling wind, subzero temperatures and freezing spray.
We followed the pack ice edge, scanning and scanning again for bears. Distant dark lumps: ice. Moving white shapes: ice. Possible yellow blobs: dirty ice. However, the more we looked, the more we saw: ringed seals sprawled on ice pans, chevrons of guillemots flying from their inland cliff nest sites to feed in the more sheltered bays, a glaucous gull picking at a dead auk, and that immaculate icon of the Arctic, the ivory gull, pure white against the buckled blue and gray sea ice. We dragged ourselves away reluctantly to attend the Captain's Welcome Dinner, but before we got our just desserts, the Captain himself called us back up for Bear No.4! Stefan had found a bear which left the ice and to our amazement, swam strongly out to sea, scattering guillemots before it. Half an hour later, it was still swimming, heading for distant ice on the horizon! No wonder they call it Ursus maritimus.
