Hinlopen Strait, East Svalbard
What an unbelievable day in the Arctic! Anticipation mounted as we hoped to search for our first polar bear later today, but first we anticipated a landing at Kinnvika in Murchisonfjorden, on the remote island of Nordaustlandet. The wooden buildings there once housed an 18-month international collaboration for the 1957-58 Geophysical Year, towards an understanding of global climate patterns and changes. But the Arctic had other plans for us—in the form of a beautiful female polar bear who came sauntering in full view along the shoreline in search of food, full of youthful curiosity. She sniffed the air, swam across a small inlet, and rolled in the snow, before eventually disappearing over the distant horizon, as we watched entranced from the ship.
While we repositioned a little further south in Hinlopen Strait, Jason Kelly presented an overview of the geological and glacial formation of Svalbard. Then, on the east coast of Spitsbergen we came to Alkefjellet, that great horizontally-stratified sea-cliff where a hundred thousand Brünich’s guillemots (thick-billed murres) congregate to breed. The sky above was black with their wingbeats, as they went to and from their narrow ledges where their mates kept watch over speckled eggs.
After lunch Elize offered a comprehensive introduction to the biology of the polar bear and soon, in Bjornsund, we got our first glimpse of sea ice. Sure enough, there was a large male, frozen in concentration as he waited at a seal’s breathing hole. We soon saw that bears were everywhere—mothers with one cub, mothers with two cubs, all hunting for seal. And then the most unexpected events unfolded before our eyes. One old, large, battle-scarred male had a carcass of a young beluga whale. He furiously started to consume it as a very hungry mother and cub tried to get near, only to be chased off. Then two more bears, attracted by the smell of blood, approached from across the ice to try their luck, each time being repulsed by the larger bear. We watched transfixed as five bears acted out the drama of the battle for survival before our eyes, while the pure white ivory gulls picked at the crimson entrails. A privilege indeed to come to this world of ice to witness first-hand such behaviors in such a setting.
