In Search of a Polar Bear – Part 2
Just about everyone we were with on our Hurtigruten’s ‘Circumnavigating Spitsbergen – In the Realm of the Polar Bear’ trip with wanted to see a polar bear. Well, of course, thats one of the main things you visit for.
But it’s definitely not as easy as you think! You can say that about most wildlife of course, it plays to its own tune and if you spot anything in the Arctic, especially in the ocean, then you are very privileged.
List to my audio introduction above
Our trip early in the season, was hampered by ice so we couldn’t circumnavigate Spitsbergen. Now believe me that is good news for the Arctic and we are not complaining. There are about 3,000 Polar Bears on Svalbard as a whole – how on earth you count them I don’t know – but mainly you find more of them on the north island, Nordaustlandet, going down towards the south two islands in the middle of the two parts, Barentsoya and Edgeoya. We should have sailed right through the Hinlopen, to the south of Spitsbergen and back up to Longyearbyen, but when the captain announced we could only go down part way and would have to turn around and go back, we all felt our chances went from slim to none from the bear perspective.
Armed and Extremely Dangerous
It was very strange going ashore to explore, in that at least 2 or 3 guides would be posted ahead, some way off, with guns ready and keeping a very close look out. We always had a very specific area where we could roam within that perimeter.
Many of our guides were rifle trained and practiced on the range at Longyearbyen regularly. Even when on a zodiac cruise, which was always in two’s, someone had a gun ready. Of course they had flare guns and blanks in the guns ready loaded, but with live ammunition to hand in case, on the rare occurrence that a bear was not scared off by just loud clapping or the flares, they had a back up plan. Good to say, the back up plan is rarely needed.
It gave us hope. If this level of bear security was needed then there had to be a real chance of us seeing one… or two…..
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Bear Prints
We had bought really good Swarovski Binoculars for this trip, having learnt our lesson from our Antarctica voyage when what we had were hardly good enough to see the shore, let alone what was on it! We did notice occasionally our guides would be scouting the shore from the ship but did wonder if operators shared wildlife locations. We know they did that in Antarctica particularly to see the different whales.
Resigned to not seeing any Polar Bears now we were heading back south, we travelled, at a fair rate of knots, with our first and only taste of strong weather, back down the coastline, much of it overnight, and went further south into Hornsund. Reaching Burgerbukta, this fjord provided some shelter from the winds gusting up to 26 metres per second, so we could land. Beautiful bays and ironically quite a lot more snow and ice than we had been seeing and feeling colder because of it. That day we saw a pod of Beluga whales – just their white backs breaching the sea, in a channel of water through the ice.
We headed back overnight into Isfjorden part way back to Longyearbyen for disembarking, but we would be stopping in two magnificent fjords on the way.
Our last day. We had a landing at Hemsedalen in Isfjorden in the morning, walking along the shoreline and up by the river that is fed by a magnificent waterfall.
Our guides, always going ahead to post the bear guards plus lay out the route and perimeter, had spotted bear footprints in the mud by the river and posted a guide by them so we could spot them. And also so we avoided walking on them so others could view the prints. A mother and a baby by the looks of the size of the paws.
That day we had been talking to Cathryn, one of the lovely crew in the dining area, and she showed us a video of a polar bear she had taken the year before, right where we had landed to see Walrus at Smeerenberg. It was taken from the ship, and they were not that far away. These two things revitalised our faith we might be lucky with a bear and proof they could be seen in the areas we were visiting.
After lunch we moved to Yoldiabukta another fjord with a huge glacier coming right down to the shore and a lot of sea ice both solid and floating. As you looked along the shore from the glacier there was a big sweep of land in front of some impressive mountains, dropping down to the shoreline. We would be taking a zodiac cruise for our last afternoon and the kayaks would be out too. We had just sat down in our cabin when the call came – Polar Bears!
We donned our coats and rushed to the top deck with our binoculars. There were three bears to begin with in amongst a rocky area between the mountains and the shoreline. They were a long way away but definitely visible. The Captain tried to get in closer, which was super. We must have watched them for an hour at least. Gradually the initial crowd diminished, which surprised me – I guess once they had seen the bears that was it!
The planned zodiac cruises were going ahead. Our zodiac group was fortunately in the second batch to go out much later in the afternoon. Our cabin was facing the land. We sat on our balcony all afternoon watching this one bear hunt along the shoreline and into the crevices of the rocks. It was fabulous.
Our colleague headed up on to the top deck with our ship loaned binoculars – he had packed his! – and watched, along with Tommy Simonsen the ship’s photographer, as the bear attempted to run down one of the Arctic Reindeer. He didn’t really stand a chance. It’s rare for a bear to attempt that, the reindeer are pretty swift, but it’s becoming a more regular thing as food is becoming harder for them to find.
What a finish to our expedition to the Arctic. The last two days of our voyage were the best from my perspective, packed with snowy scenes, icy fjords and of course the Polar Bear. We were very fortunate. Despite trying to take both photographs and video with my new iphone15 we were too far away for the bear to be anything other than a small yellowish white dot. Thank goodness Tommy had a super duper camera and the bear photos I have shared here are courtesy of him and our Hurtigruten expedition.