Diskobukta, Spitsbergen
The previous day had been a baptism by fire in the crucible of a full-blown gale. Then as we steamed northwards into the belly of a high-pressure cell centered over the northern reaches of Storfjord the winds began to drop and the seas lost some of the punch that had been temporarily fueled by the tempestuous marriage of two systems of differing atmospheric pressures. Our night passed uneventfully. Sated with sound slumber, many of us were up early as the National Geographic Endeavour rested gently at anchor in Diskobukta, a broad, shallow bay on the western side of Edgeoya Island. The morning wind, born on the island's high ice fields then drawn and driven by gravity, was cold and brisk as it swept offshore from the alluvial edges of the snow-covered, sedimentary flat-topped mountains of this third largest island in the Svalbard archipelago.
The sun was shrouded behind a low-lying veil of fast-moving, gray clouds - its rays occasionally breaking through and lighting up the green Arctic waters and dark tan topography of western Edgeoya. From the beach, an amalgam of pebbles, cobbles, and bits of low-grade shale cemented together with silt washed out from the island's Triassic hillocks, we set out on a series of walks. The landing site's most conspicuous feature, a hunting and trapping encampment in operation for centuries, showed signs of being well kept and recently used. Whale bones - pieces of lower jaws, skulls, vertebrae, and rib bones, sun-bleached and well preserved, littered the entire shoreline, all which remained of a once vibrant but relatively short-lived Arctic economy; where living for and off the land was a creed and profit was king.
The avian life here was exceptional, not for numbers of species, but for the sheer numbers of one particular species that was thriving in the seasonal portal of Arctic rebirth. A short walk from the beach across the alluvial flats the cliffs began to rise in a textbook example of lightly-metamorphosed sedimentary layering. A small river from glacial and ice field melt-water had carved a deep, vertical canyon in the mountain's southwest slope. These cliffs, perhaps a hundred meters high or so and made of shale and slate, provide a perfect nesting site for kittiwakes. Here thousands of birds, after traveling thousands of miles north from their winter grounds in Europe and the Mediterranean, come to build temporary homes and raise their brood. The cacophony was almost deafening in the center of the alcove.
While scanning the scene around us we spotted an Arctic fox, already in its summer coat of blond and brown, skirting the top of the scree slope, searching for an easy meal. Nearby, another was sleeping curled up in the moss and grass. It was soon apparent that as many as five or six (a few adults and at least two pups) of these circumpolar specialists were working the kittiwake colony. The Arctic fox lives in two particular habitat types, inland and coastal, and their life-styles are tied to these habitat types. Svalbard boasts one native rodent - the sibling vole. Most inland Arctic foxes (particularly in North America, Eurasia, and Greenland) are lemming specialists. There are no lemmings in Svalbard, so Svalbard foxes concentrate their forage efforts on other types of prey. In spring and summer ringed seal pups, seabirds, geese, bird eggs, and rock ptarmigan are the major prey items. In winter their diet consists mainly of rock ptarmigan, stored food that was gathered and cached in summer and autumn, and carcasses of seal and reindeer. We all watched closely as the foxes moved without rest along the cliff bottom. In a flash one fox made a leap at a low-flying kittiwake and came away with its prize. It proudly carried its quarry virtually right by the location where we were all watching this scene play out. We had stumbled on to a stage where generations of actors from time immemorial had come and gone, all living out their respective roles in an ancient, seasonal drama of life and death in the high Arctic.
In the afternoon and evening we sailed into the strait between Edgeoya and Barentsoya Islands, in search of wildlife. The sky was opaque and featureless. As the wind died with the dimming light and the waters evened to a reflective calm, we launched Zodiacs for an intimate cruise into Arctic eventide. A few ringed seals reposed in the distance on the fast ice, but Negri glacier, its face clean and smooth as any in the Arctic, provided the backdrop for a late-night motor into an almost monochromatic field of blue-gray and white. The realm was ethereal, and our time was one of quiet and virtual solitude. Only the chanting of some wayward Vikingesque oddballs in a small craft and clad in their respective father-country flags, without food and bereft of almost any items necessary for survival in extreme climes, broke the spell. They appeared mad as hatters, but approached with open arms and a bevy of spirits - the kind you can feel and the kind you can drink.
The previous day had been a baptism by fire in the crucible of a full-blown gale. Then as we steamed northwards into the belly of a high-pressure cell centered over the northern reaches of Storfjord the winds began to drop and the seas lost some of the punch that had been temporarily fueled by the tempestuous marriage of two systems of differing atmospheric pressures. Our night passed uneventfully. Sated with sound slumber, many of us were up early as the National Geographic Endeavour rested gently at anchor in Diskobukta, a broad, shallow bay on the western side of Edgeoya Island. The morning wind, born on the island's high ice fields then drawn and driven by gravity, was cold and brisk as it swept offshore from the alluvial edges of the snow-covered, sedimentary flat-topped mountains of this third largest island in the Svalbard archipelago.
The sun was shrouded behind a low-lying veil of fast-moving, gray clouds - its rays occasionally breaking through and lighting up the green Arctic waters and dark tan topography of western Edgeoya. From the beach, an amalgam of pebbles, cobbles, and bits of low-grade shale cemented together with silt washed out from the island's Triassic hillocks, we set out on a series of walks. The landing site's most conspicuous feature, a hunting and trapping encampment in operation for centuries, showed signs of being well kept and recently used. Whale bones - pieces of lower jaws, skulls, vertebrae, and rib bones, sun-bleached and well preserved, littered the entire shoreline, all which remained of a once vibrant but relatively short-lived Arctic economy; where living for and off the land was a creed and profit was king.
The avian life here was exceptional, not for numbers of species, but for the sheer numbers of one particular species that was thriving in the seasonal portal of Arctic rebirth. A short walk from the beach across the alluvial flats the cliffs began to rise in a textbook example of lightly-metamorphosed sedimentary layering. A small river from glacial and ice field melt-water had carved a deep, vertical canyon in the mountain's southwest slope. These cliffs, perhaps a hundred meters high or so and made of shale and slate, provide a perfect nesting site for kittiwakes. Here thousands of birds, after traveling thousands of miles north from their winter grounds in Europe and the Mediterranean, come to build temporary homes and raise their brood. The cacophony was almost deafening in the center of the alcove.
While scanning the scene around us we spotted an Arctic fox, already in its summer coat of blond and brown, skirting the top of the scree slope, searching for an easy meal. Nearby, another was sleeping curled up in the moss and grass. It was soon apparent that as many as five or six (a few adults and at least two pups) of these circumpolar specialists were working the kittiwake colony. The Arctic fox lives in two particular habitat types, inland and coastal, and their life-styles are tied to these habitat types. Svalbard boasts one native rodent - the sibling vole. Most inland Arctic foxes (particularly in North America, Eurasia, and Greenland) are lemming specialists. There are no lemmings in Svalbard, so Svalbard foxes concentrate their forage efforts on other types of prey. In spring and summer ringed seal pups, seabirds, geese, bird eggs, and rock ptarmigan are the major prey items. In winter their diet consists mainly of rock ptarmigan, stored food that was gathered and cached in summer and autumn, and carcasses of seal and reindeer. We all watched closely as the foxes moved without rest along the cliff bottom. In a flash one fox made a leap at a low-flying kittiwake and came away with its prize. It proudly carried its quarry virtually right by the location where we were all watching this scene play out. We had stumbled on to a stage where generations of actors from time immemorial had come and gone, all living out their respective roles in an ancient, seasonal drama of life and death in the high Arctic.
In the afternoon and evening we sailed into the strait between Edgeoya and Barentsoya Islands, in search of wildlife. The sky was opaque and featureless. As the wind died with the dimming light and the waters evened to a reflective calm, we launched Zodiacs for an intimate cruise into Arctic eventide. A few ringed seals reposed in the distance on the fast ice, but Negri glacier, its face clean and smooth as any in the Arctic, provided the backdrop for a late-night motor into an almost monochromatic field of blue-gray and white. The realm was ethereal, and our time was one of quiet and virtual solitude. Only the chanting of some wayward Vikingesque oddballs in a small craft and clad in their respective father-country flags, without food and bereft of almost any items necessary for survival in extreme climes, broke the spell. They appeared mad as hatters, but approached with open arms and a bevy of spirits - the kind you can feel and the kind you can drink.
