Cape Fanshawe & Bjornsundet, Svalbard
Any day that starts with 100,000 birds has to be a good one...right?! We were awakened early by Lisa as the National Geographic Explorer started its approach into Cape Fanshawe at around 0545. You learn to sleep fast up here in the Arctic, as with 24 hour daylight we like to maximise our opportunites.
The 180-200ft cliffs composed of dolorite and capped in places with limestone rose straight up from the sea, and the air was thick with thousands of Thick-billed murres (known elsewhere as Brunnich’s guillemots). Scanning along the cliffs it looked like bees swarming into a hive, the air alive with the whirring of their wings and the braying calls. Thousands of Black-legged kittiwakes also shared the steeper parts of the cliffs, choosing to build their nests from weed in the steeper sections of the cliff, whilst the murres lay their eggs directly onto the rocky ledges. These ledges in places are so tightly packed with birds you wonder how on Earth they find their mates, or stop the eggs from rolling off the cliff. The trick is through all of the noise—essentially vocal recognition of their mates as they arrive back at the ledge. And, intriguingly their egg is very sharply pointed at one end, an aid to limiting the roll of the egg should it be left briefly.
The dive boat headed out and gave a great sense of scale to the cliffs as we slowly drifted down along the cliffs, with the bow of the boat almost within touching distance. The sight, the sound, and the smell tweaked our senses, and many of us were ‘lucky,’ with birds flying over the ship often finding somebody below to be a good target. We were lucky enough to witness nature in action, with a kittiwake squabble resulting in a Glaucous gull taking advantage of the temporary distraction and grabbing one of the birds. A struggle ensued, but the much smaller kittiwake was no match for the Glaucous gull and was slowly incapacitated. Unfortunately for the Glaucous gull it was all in vain, as a Great skua came along and took the dead kittiwake, the gull leaving as soon as the skua approached. Nature is very raw, but there are no bad guys, even the Glaucous gulls had chicks to feed, and we saw some of them on the rock stacks nearby.
And so it was time for breakfast and then the search for polar bears began. We firstly cruised along Vaigattbogen, with the first live bear of the trip being spotted by one of the guests! An amazing spotting of a large male, lying down on the shore. The Captain brought the bow of the ship in very close for a great look at this beautiful animal, and we watched him sniff the air and walk the shore. We then headed into Nordenskioldoya where we hoped to find some remaining sea ice, but all that had been there a week ago had completely melted, and we even had some fog to make things a little more difficult. With no wind we did have beautiful reflections of the fulmars and murres flying by the ship though!
Heading around into Bjornsundet the search for bears really got underway, and finding two females each with a first year cub, and a large male we sat and waited. Although not close to the ship, the next two hours or so of animal behaviour was absolutely intriguing and exciting. We witnessed one of the females run and pounce on a ringed seal, dragging it to the ice on the shore and then devouring it with its cub...the ice around it slowly turning red. We then also watched the other female and cub head out onto the fast ice, obviously on the hunt for seals. Heading almost to the same bearded seals the female and the larger male both got into the water from different directions and attempted to swim under the ice to capture one of the seals. The cub stayed back on the ice, peering towards where its mother appeared every now and then through a hole in the ice. Gripped by the events unfolding in front of us, we watched as the female got closer to the first seal, then losing her nerve perhaps and fearing for the safety of the cub with the male around she raised her head too far above the ice to see him and spooked the seal. She then carried on to a second seal, with the male still nearby also doing the same. After 10 minutes or so, when she was closing on the seal, she suddenly jumped from the water and ran back towards the cub, appearing to again lose her nerve. This again spooked the seal, who slipped into the water. The female and cub, seeming to realise how close the male was started to run across the fast ice away from him, as he got up onto the ice out of the water and started to follow her. The chase lasted probably almost a mile across the ice, and she headed off towards the shore, scaring many more seals as she went, with the male seeming to follow behind, until he broke off the chase and headed off in search of prey.
We cruised right around Wihelmoya to continue the search, and as the tally of bears for the day rose we realised this was turning into a record breaking day. We encountered a very healthy looking mother with two second year cubs, as well as a number of other singles, and although none were approached closely, or were interested in approaching us, we had excellent views with binoculars and scopes from the bridge and bow.
After dinner we again had reports of bears, and this time we were able to scan a piece of fast ice which contained bear after bear, including several mothers with twin first year cubs...this had certainly been our day! It would appear that the shrinking sea ice around the archipelago has really concentrated the bears into small areas of ice that remain, a boon for us, but hard to tell how this is going to affect the bears in the coming months.
