After searching for polar bears most of the day yesterday it was good to stretch our legs on the tundra of Barentsoya. We are still on the east side of Svalbard, and some of the Gulf Stream current helps create an upwelling by bringing up cold nutrient water to the surface that will feed the whole food chain. The fertilization by bird droppings further enriches the surroundings of Storfjord and the rich vegetation cover characteristic for this area was such a wonderful contrast to yesterday’s polar desert.
We had great luck on the hike and were able to get close to a rock ptarmigan. This beautiful male ptarmigan was still in winter plumage and thus quite obvious on the snowless landscape. This bird is a good example of “Bergmann’s rule,” that indicates that animals get bigger the further north you go. On mainland Norway, this bird weighs around one pound, but up here in Svalbard it is twice that size. This idea that the further north you go, the larger the animal will be, is valid for many arctic species.
As we walked along the shore we came across the skull of a polar bear. Based on the size of the skull it seemed to be around two years old. This is the time when cubs leave their mothers. Sometimes the cubs will be killed by other males in the spring as they fight to mate with females. If the cub is killed in the spring, the female will soon come in heat, so she is ready to mate which is what the male was trying to achieve. Since the skull was crushed, this might be one explanation to what happened, or it could have been broken as other bears will scavenge on other dead bears.
A great number of people also chose to try a Zodiac cruise. It was a nice and warm day – as warm as it gets in the high arctic. It is a nice experience to explore the area from a Zodiac, and they were able to get very close to a resting walrus with a pup on an ice flow during the cruise.
As we left the anchorage we spotted two bears not far from our landing. One of them was walking towards us as we left the landing. Since it was too shallow for the ship to get close to the bear, we launched all the Zodiacs from the ship and had a convoy of Zodiacs trying to get close to the polar bear. The polar bear took off as we approached, and since polar bears are very vulnerable to overheating we headed back to the ship. Great though to see another polar bear.
