Day VI, Svalbard.

7-19-15 BOCKFJORDEN, SVALBARD: Worsleyneset is a flat, red soil beach with a long, curled, rocky peninsula, presumably another glacial moraine, extending into Woodfjorden Bay near its entrance. The plan was to hike the area, but a bear was spotted on land, which means no landing, no hiking, but zodiac cruises.

I should add that before any landing the area is scanned for bears. If a bear is seen, landing is precluded. When we do land, the guides all carry rifles and flares in the event of a bear attack.

The day was sunny and warmer than we have had so far with no wind. The local geography is sedimentary, red sandstone, uplifted and tilted, and lots of glacial erratics. We were cruising along the shore and saw a wreck of a fishing or hunting shack. On the inside of the curled peninsula we saw a big flock of pink-footed geese with one barred goose in the middle. There were eiders, fulmars and gulls on the water.

The bear, our fifth, was spotted further inland walking toward us near the beach. The zodiacs were jockeying for photo op position, and moving to stay ahead of the bear, who was oblivious to the boats. The bear was trotting along briskly, then stopped, sniffed the air, and headed for the water and swam toward the peninsula. He [she] came out of the water where a bunch of glaucous gulls were clustered around something at the water’s edge. The bear pulled it out of the water. It looked like a thick rug. The guides thought it was a dead whale skin. The bear dragged it to the top of the low bank and started eating. The gulls voiced their objections to the theft of their lunch. After many pix, we went back to the ship for our lunch.


Ship's position at breakfast.

Pink-footed geese on shore.

Pink-footed geese and one barred goose in the water.

Bear in the distance...

Closer, and moving along...

Retrieving lunch...

Mmmm, tasty.

After said lunch we hiked at Bockfjorden, a cul-de-sac further south off the main bay that offers a small hot spring. There is nearby volcanism. One side of the cove is the sedimentary, red sandstone, mountain high this time. The other side of the cove is the gray mountains that we usually see, a very rocky beach and a small glacier, above the beach are two beige mounds, the precipitate from the hot springs, I’m guessing calcium carbonate. Rocks below the springs have a coating of pink material from the springs, perhaps a carbonate containing manganese. In places the coating had chipped off. The coating was 2 mm thick and layered, indicating successive accumulations. The beach is filled with weathered rocks, and a huge rock pile nearby is a glacial moraine. The landscape is filled with glacial valleys, arêtes and horns.


Red mountains on the left, black on the right,

After the hike, we did a zodiac cruise to the base of the glacier. A walrus surfaced near the zodiac and spouted like a whale. We moved away to avoid any contact with what is basically a marine rhinoceros. We saw him a few more times, but from a distance. There were more geese on the beach and in the water. The rocks below the glacier looked like basalt consistent with a volcanic neighborhood.


Small glacier.

Brent geese and pink-footed geese.

Walrus near the zodiac.

Back on the ship, cleaning up before the big BBQ, whale sightings were announced over the PA system. In the bay near the walrus site were many beluga whales, perhaps as many as a hundred according to the naturalists. The beluga is a small whale, white as an adult and gray as an immature. Whatever drew the walrus also drew the whales and the gulls swarming overhead, perhaps some fish run. It’s very hard to photograph whales that barely, briefly surface. But by shooting at spouts, I got a few bodies and one possible head out of dozens of attempts. I should have taken video—next time.


Four spouts, whale backs and glacial moraine on shore,

More belugas on the other side of the bay.

The BBQ outside on the stern in the warm, bright evening sun was great, with live music and mulled wine, and whale watching.

Day V, Svalbard.

7-18-15 ARCTIC OCEAN NORTH OF SVALBARD: We are back up here above 80° N Latitude near the Sjuøyane Islands, the most northerly part of Svarbard, looking for white bears again. I was on the bridge shortly after breakfast and spotted a group of harp seals near the ship. A few minutes later someone else spotted a swimming bear behind us. The ship turned around and we went to see the bear land on an ice floe and dash across it and jump back in the water. It was clearly stressed by the ship so we left it alone.

Not much later another bear, the second of the day was seen on an ice floe so the ship again turned around, and we went to look. This bear was eating a seal it had caught fairly recently. She, we think, dragged the seal to the other side of the floe as we neared. She was sharing the kill with several glaucous gulls and a couple ivory gulls. Sharing is the wrong word, the gulls snatched an occasional tidbit when the bear was working at the other end of the seal.

A third bear, smaller and thinner than the second bear, jumped on the ice floe and raced toward the second, larger bear, who abandoned the kill without even a snarl. The second bear swam to a nearby floe and watched the third bear take over the seal. By late afternoon the seal was nearly down to bones.

The naturalists thought that the third bear was a yearling or two year-old cub of the second bear not yet own its own, and that the mother left the seal to the cub. In any event, she had eaten most of the blubber, perhaps 40 kg, which, at 9 calories/g, works out to 360,000 calories. Now that’s a hearty meal.

I should mention that the expedition guides offer lectures , two or three a day, on a variety of topics from photography to flora and fauna, geography, climate.


Morning Position high in the Arctic Sea.

Harp seals in a pack of about a dozen.

Swimming bear, number one of the day.

Mama bear, bear number 2, with her seal, glaucous gull watching.

She moves the seal away from the ship.

Glaucous gull with gray wings and two ivory gulls check the site where the seal had been.

Baby bear, bear number 3, has taken over the catch. Mama bear on the far floe.

Baby bear and helper work the seal.

Getting into it.

Darwin said that 'nature was red on tooth and claw' but really.

We saw seals often taking a breather on the floe next to an air hole.

Day IV, Svalbard.

7-17-15 BRASVELLBREEN ICE CAP, SVALBARD: This morning after breakfast, we were in the zodiacs at Alkefjellet on the Hinlopen Strait for the bird-nesting cliff. There was still the northerly wind, and the chop was now up to three-foot waves and a couple of them climbed into the boat. The cliff is nesting ground, or wall, for thousands and thousands of Brünnich’s guillemots.

The birds lay a single egg on the cliff ledges and have to protect the chick from Arctic foxes and glaucous gulls. The cliffs are dark rock with spires and crevices, patches of snow and patches of grass, and all of it stained with guano. Waves were crashing against the base of the cliff. The birds were perched all over the cliff, flying on and off the perches, floating on the water and diving. Their water landings often look chaotic. I took almost a zillion pix. We did see two foxes, their coats turning from white to blue-black, early on the cliff cruise. We also saw a bunch of the predatory gulls.


Bird cliffs - all those dots in the sky are birds. I'll put some videos on Facebook.

One guillemot...

More guillemots...

Many, many guillemots...

Guillemots on and under the water.

Foxes prey on the chicks.

After lunch, the wind was gone, the sun was out and the water turned flat quite quickly. We landed on a stony beach at Torrelnessett, on the eastern side of Hinlopen Strait on Nordaustlandet. It is a long and wide beach with several well-defined terraces rising away from the ocean. The area is desert-like with scant plant-life, miniscule and infrequently distributed on the gravel. The areas around a very old whale skull and a piece of an old antler have more plants, fertilized by the organic matter. The terracing is attributed to isostatic equilibrium.

Simply stated, that means that when the glaciers covered the north with a kilometer or more of ice, the continental crust was pushed down into the earth’s semi-soft mantle by the weight of the ice. When the ice melted, the crust rebounded and gradually rose out of the mantle, in fact, it’s still rising. The upper most terrace was formed at sea level early in the process, but now is perhaps a hundred feet above sea level. Intermediate terraces formed as the land slowly rose.

The big excitement here was group of walruses, about three dozen, all males according to the guides. There were in a big scrum with occasional stirring around. One big old guy sat up for a look at us. One had a broken tusk. Some had gapped tusks and some misaligned tusks. There’s plenty of work here for an enterprising orthodontist.


Mid-day position in Hinlopen Strait between Spitsbergen and Nordaustlande.

Terraced, gravelled, arid beach at Torrelnessett.

Walruses...

Walruses...

Walrus.

After dinner, we did an ice cruise at Brasvellbreen, further east on Nordaustlandet Island. Remember, it’s as light at 10 PM as it is at noon. There is an icecap, apparently the largest other than those in Antarctica. It differs from a glacier by covering an extensive area of land and flowing outward from the highest point. An ice sheet is bigger still. A glacier is a river of ice flowing down and excavating a valley.

Approaching the ice cap, we worked our way through big and little pieces of floating ice. It was mostly white, but there were blue, red or yellow colors on some chunks and some were covered with dirt. The ice drifts with the current. There was zero wind and the water was like a mirror, each ice castle and arch was reflected in the mirror, even as they floated by us. The water was clear enough for us to see the underwater parts of the ice. On the way back to the ship, we stumbled upon a zodiac oasis offering hot tea with Jameson’s—that was a most pleasant surprise.


Midnight sun.

Port holes in the side of an ice ship.

Front edge of the ice cap.

Ice oasis.

Day III, Svalbard.

7-16-15 ARCTIC OCEAN, NORTH OF SVALBARD: We woke up amidst the polar ice pack. The north wind has blown the ice floes southward and spread them apart. We are motoring along above 80° N Latitude, heading northeast and looking for polar bears. Judy and I were on the bridge all morning, along with many other passengers, all of us on the lookout. We saw an occasional whale, mostly just the spout, in the distance. There were no bears.

The ice is mostly white, but lots of blue coloring is present. Occasionally dirt covered ice, brown or black, broken off from glaciers, looks like a whale for a moment, especially when a wave hits it and makes a big splash. There are lots of little pieces of ice and big ice floes of a couple acres in size and everything in between. It’s cold outside on the deck, but tolerable if you find a spot in the lee of the wind. I got some decent bird pix of northern fulmars, kittiwakes and a couple guillemots. There were no bears after lunch, and then we napped. Judy was disparaging our chances of ever seeing a bear.

Dinner was interrupted with news of a bear sighting!

One of the naturalists with a spotting scope found a sleeping bear on an ice floe make five miles away. We all dressed for the cold and headed for vantage points on the bow or upper decks. It was far off and hard to find. It looked like a buttery lump on the snow covered ice.

Silence was the rule, as the crew edged the ship closer and closer until we were quite near it. The bear stirred in its sleep a few times but didn’t awaken. There was a red stain on the ice a few yards away from the bear, and it was speculated that the bear had caught a seal. The consensus, however, was that it was just reddish ice. We backed away from the bear and continued on southeasterly.


Above 80° N. Latitude. The pole is 90° -  for the navigationally naive.

The polar ice pack.

Black-legged Kittiwake.

Common Guillemot.

We glide through the ice.

Northern Fulmar.

Bear in the distance.

Closer to the bear, red ice visible.

Bear stirs...

Stretches...

Goes back to sleep in his icy bed.