Hinlopen Strait and Nordaustlandet, Svalbard
It was all about ice, really. Our whole day revolved around that solid aquatic state that makes the polar regions special. It tantalized our senses and served as highways, hotels, and restaurants for our wild companions.
It’s hard to sleep. Bright light filters in beneath shades or porthole coverings and the temptation is too great. One must look out. Morning began at the western edge of Hinlopen Strait, near Nordenskøldøya. Platters of ice on a blue-gray sea were all that told where the horizon might be for sea and sky were one. Tiny snowflakes adhered to the railings creating lacy edgings. Land seemed to be a mirage, a random set of black and white lines here and there. Brünnich’s guillemots pretended to be penguins on ice, standing upright on fragments of floes or drifting in rafts on the water. In unison they dashed away etching the surface with their long pattering run, the sound echoing around like a rushing waterfall. Fulmars clustered on the fast ice, that vast emptiness of white that periodically revealed its mammalian inhabitants. Ringed and bearded seals and the odd rotund walrus appeared to rest. But survival required vigilance for the king of the Arctic was near. Large furry feet had left their impressions everywhere, the trails meandering seemingly aimlessly.
Throughout the day the routine became quite set. From Vellebreen to Tumlingodden to Bjørnsundet and finally to Nordaustlandet, the search was on. Find the pack. Scan the pack and the fast ice tucked in behind. And there would be a polar bear! Distant bears, napping bears, a mother and her yearling, swimming bears and curious bears; the ice was host to them all.
For us, the shapes and forms, the mirrored reflections in calm water between the floes was a palate of pleasure for the eyes but for these animals its presence ensures a ready food supply. The birds too rely on this frozen sea. Kittiwakes squabbled as floes rose against our hull revealing arctic cod and dovekies dashed after copepods similarly hiding beneath the ice. An ivory gull seemed to converse with a napping young bear telling it to rise, hunt and provide it with leftover scraps.
At Nordaustlandet, the ice formed a formidable cliff as it poured from the island’s heights. Sheer and beautiful it undulated in and out for tens of kilometers. From the upper deck its snow covered dome seemed to continue forever, its whiteness accentuated by a dark eastern sky. Who was it that turned from this majestic cathedral to scan the pack ice once more only to find yet another polar bear?
As the sun swirls around the sky, we leave the ice behind and venture north once more to where the sea is charcoal and the sky a silver gray and the land once more is an abstract sketch of white on black.
