Spitsbergen Monochromes

Sep28

Spitsbergen. Days 39 to 41. 6th to 8th August 2013.

Polar Bears.

Tinayrebukta Glacier.

Bearded Seal.

Kittiwakes.

Lilliehöökbreen Glacier.

Blue Whale.

Guillemots after first flight fall.

Walrus.

Polar Bear.

Glacier at Hamiltonbukta.

Smeerenburg.

Smeerenburg Glacier.

Harbour Seal.

Mid-Atlantic ice.

Polar bear in ice.

Polar bear on ice floe.

Midnight ice.
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Bear Islands and Syd Kap

Sep26

Bear Islands and Syd Kap, Scoresby Sund, Greenland. Day 48. 15th August 2013.

We went out in the zodiacs in the morning at the Bear Islands, navigating around in a forest of huge icebergs.

It was raining most of the day but that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm for the spectacular scenery around us.

Some remarkable patterns in the ice, too. I think the blue bands are fissures that have refrozen.

Then we encountered a polar bear swimming in the water (water trail at bottom left).

He got to land, looked at us for a while, then disappeared out of sight.

Later in the afternoon we had a landing at Syd Kap. Even some places in eastern Greenland you can find wildflowers.

This is an ancient Inuit meat safe or fridge in the context of the environment. They could put say a seal kill in there with stones over the top, safe from arctic foxes and polar bears.

Ice is Nice

Sep22

Between Spitsbergen and Greenland. Days 41 and 42. 8th to 9th August 2013.

All shots are at sea between Spitsbergen and Iceland.

Still close to Spitsbergen, we passed a seal on a floating ice shelf.

Always, interesting pattern in the ice.

Perhaps some kind of frozen prehistoric marine monster.

This is the bow of the ship (a Russian icebreaker, originally built in Finland), cutting through the ice.

And then we saw a couple of polar bears swimming (this is a long way away).

That’s not a dog, it’s a polar bear!

Watching us….

Going down….

This is not land. The polar bear is walking on an ice floe, sea covered by ice.

This will soon be an historic image. Within ten years, at most twenty, all the sea ice in the Arctic will be gone. The polar bears may go too, because hunting seals on the ice floes is an essential part of their way of life. They can swim a long way but already some are likely drowning before they find the next patch of ice.

A brief sunset-type moment, where the sea fog cleared enough for the sun to come through. It is 11:15pm, still too far north for the sun to actually set.

Ice Is Nice, that’s what they say,
Ice Is Nice, throw some my way,
Ice Is Nice on any day,
Twice as nice when violins play.

(Deliberately misquoted)

Guillemots, Walruses and a Polar Bear

Sep19

Hamiltonbukta, Spitsbergen. Day 40. 7th August 2013.

We had sailed overnight and were now in the remote bay of Hamiltonbukta, probably around forty kilometres from where those sealers were frozen in, in 1872. Early in the morning, we set out in the zodiacs.

These are bird cliffs. There are thousands of guillemots up there nesting on little ledges.

If you click on this image, you can see some of the birds up there. We were at the time when the chicks leave the nest, high on the cliffs. The only problem is that they haven’t flown before and they don’t do it very well. The parents call to them from down on the sea and they throw themselves out of the nest, half flying down to the sea, often bouncing off rocks on the way down but usually seemingly little the worse for wear. However, it is a hazardous journey and skuas and glaucous gulls are waiting to snap up any chicks they can, particularly the ones that don’t make it to the sea.

Here’s one that made it down safely,

now reunited with Mum

and paddling off together.

This is just a cliff, no ledges for the guillemots to nest. Note the waterfall at the right though.

A little later we encountered a couple of walruses, mother and cub.

They looked at us for a while, then slid back into the water.

These were the only walruses we were to encounter on the journey.

Another of the ubiquitous glaciers of Spitsbergen.

I didn’t expect to see a yacht so far north, though.

There was also a stray polar bear up on the cliffs. They are usually solitary.

There are 2,000 to 3,000 polar bears in Spitsbergen (or Svalbard if you prefer). The males grow to 350-500kg and the females 150-250kg. They are 2 to 3 metres long.

Patterns and details in the glacier….

The floating ice sometimes assumes fantastic shapes.

The scale of the glaciers is most impressive.

Bird cliffs again.

(I am about to increase my posting rate until the end of the month. One a day is not enough to finish Spitsbergen and Greenland in that time so some days there will be two posts).

Polar Bears at Tinayrebukta

Sep16

Tinayrebukta, Spitsbergen. Day 39. 6th August 2013.

We had left Longyearbeyan the previous afternoon and sailed north up the coast of Spitsbergen during the night to a northern fjord, Tinayrebukta. We piled into the zodiacs in the early morning and within half an hour came across a pair of polar bears, mother and cub, who had been feeding off a reindeer carcase and weren’t at all concerned about us.

You can go on a voyage such as this and not see a single polar bear and we had jagged two in the first half hour.

This is the voyage. Up the coast of Spitsbergen, across to Greenland, down the coast of Greenland through the fjords and then down to Iceland. The red dots don’t all indicate stops. Many are intermediate points to simulate the route. There is also serious distortion here due to the Mercator projection. Spitsbergen (or Svalbard to use the less ambiguous name) is actually half the size of Iceland.

This is the voyage in Spitsbergen. Longyearbyen is at the bottom of the map. I have included the trip to Pyramiden. From Longyearbyen we sailed to Tinayrebukta (this post), Lilliehöökbreen, Hamiltonbukta and Smeerenburg, then departed for Greenland.