Isbukta
This morning, we awoke to a sensation momentarily different to those of the past week; banging and reverberation, rather like the anchor being lowered. But it was not the anchor – it was the sound of pack-ice glancing off National Geographic Explorer’s hull. There were some early, distant sightings of polar bears, which were encouraging, and then more, on fast-ice, in Isbukta.
We lowered the Zodiacs after breakfast, fanning-out towards the ice-edge and the glacier beyond, creasing the glassy water between the softening floes. At a mile’s distance, the first bear was difficult to point out to guests unfamiliar with an Arctic landscape and its subtle complexity of whites, browns and greys. The second bear was closer, and clearly definable against the background; it was not something that could make an award-winning photograph, but it permitted observation of shape, colour and movement. During the late morning, two walrus were seen half a mile astern of the ship – two wonderfully obese males basking head to toe on an ice-floe that seemed vastly overloaded by their bulk.
After lunch, another bear was spotted more than a mile ahead, and as we nosed through the ice, the guests filled the fore deck and balcony beneath the Bridge, bundled against the chill wind scanning the mass of ice floes with binoculars and cameras. The bear, which was a young female of 500 - 600lbs, had killed a harp seal, which it swam between two floes, lifting the 300lb weight out of the water in a single movement. The ship edged gently forward while we watched with a mixture of horror and fascination as the bear proceeded to strip away the seal’s skin to get the fat beneath. Such things are not commonly observed, and against the backdrop of Spitsbergen’s jagged coast, and the slate-grey sky, the scene had a raw and primordial quality to it. The Captain eased the ship to a halt at a respectable distance from the feeding bear which had just begun to show visible concern at our presence, scraping snow onto her kill, to hide it, and standing aside the carcass, gutsy and defiant, as polar bears always are.
Leaving the bear where we found it, we backed-up and skirted the area before proceeding, and had only travelled a few miles before the call came from observers on the bridge that there was another bear ahead; again a young female. The excitement aboard was palpable, with the Chart Room full of guests coming and going from the fore deck, checking their photographs and expressing their delight at the good fortune we seemed to be having.
But what many might consider to be the best was still to come: another sighting, and this time a female bear with a cub-of-the-year was approaching, directly in line with the bow.
While we edged forward, she kept moving brazenly towards us, with the cub emulating her every move. Save for the clicking of camera shutters, there was silence on the deck as the bears continued their approach, moving deftly over the ice floes and jumping between them, when necessary. Coming from upwind, they passed the ship at about 150 yards, off the starboard side, before getting downwind of us and then approaching the stern. They stopped 25 feet from us, staring up at the colourful confusion of coats and hats atop the huge metal beast that had stopped in the ice, and the array of strange gadgets pointing down at them, silent save for a frenetic clicking. To us, this generous appearance epitomized the wild beauty of Svalbard and the fearless audacity of the bears, and it was hard not to imagine what we must have seemed to them, silently watching, recording their every move.
The bears’ curiosity waned and the mother led her cub off to get back to the business of looking for food, leaving us elated at having had such a wonderful opportunity to satisfy what for so many was a key desire in coming to Svalbard. This was a day, without doubt, that yielded the best of what expedition cruising in the Arctic can offer.
