POLAR BEAR EXPLORER ON THE M/S FREYA WITH RUSS MACLAUGHLIN & SHANNON WILD. TRIP LOG July 15-24, 2016

Transcription

1 POLAR BEAR EXPLORER ON THE M/S FREYA WITH RUSS MACLAUGHLIN & SHANNON WILD TRIP LOG July 15-24, 2016

2 YOUR JOURNEY Longyeabyen Seven Islands - Phipps Island Karl XII Island Ringertz Island Kinnvika Kross Island Gylden Island Alkefjellet Brasvellbreen Torellneset Leifdefjorden Fair Haven Holmia Bukta Fuglefjord Magdalenafjord Ymerbukta 16 1

3 DAY 1 LONGYEARBYEN The journey begins JULY 2016 Today, we were picked up and transported to the M/S Freya where we met Mats, our Expedition Leader, who introduced us to our expedition ship crew. As we sailed out in Isfjorden and started our journey north, Mats briefly introduced our expedition plans and we all got to know each other; then just after dinner we got our first meeting with the Arctic wildlife! A blue whale was sighted from the bridge, and we watched it dive and it show off its massive fluke. As we got closer we could see the whole animal swimming around the ship. We couldn t believe how lucky we were to get this close to world s biggest animal! We were all super excited over what else we could expect for the upcoming days.

4 DAY 2 AT SEA: SEVEN ISLANDS - PHIPPS ISLAND The first landing 16 JULY 2016 To see as much wildlife as possible during our expedition, Mats decided to sail directly up to the pack ice. We had a long journey ahead on board the ship, so it was great to have some lectures to keep us busy. Shannon gave us some great advice in photo composition and camera techniques, whilst Mats gave a lecture about the history and background on polar bears; how recently they were actually protected and how we got to learn what we know today. To break up our long journey we decided to visit the Seven Islands in the evening, the northernmost Islands of the Svalbard archipelago. Sailing in the trails of the Phipps expedition in 1772, we landed on Phipps Island, where Lord Nelson was badly injured by a polar bear. We visited Svalbard s northernmost cabin, before slowly walking up to the walrus colony. There were around 70 walruses on the beach and we spent about two hours with them. Lots of interesting behaviour too. The young males were measuring their strength and a few calves were riding on the backs of their mothers. They were a bit sceptical about our presence on land but once in the Zodiacs they felt more comfortable and came up to have a closer look at us.

5 DAY 3 CONTINUING NORTH INTO THE PACK ICE The first polar bear 17 JULY 2016 We really had to travel far north to find the ice, but at 81` degrees north we pushed the Freya through increasingly harder and thicker ice. As we navigated between the massive ice floes we all searched excitingly through our binoculars looking for polar bears. We saw many seals, both bearded and harp, and knew that with such an abundance of food the bears wouldn t be far off! We first discovered a hunting bear on the ice, but the ice was so thick that we couldn t really get close. We then started spotting bears everywhere; we saw at least five bears around us in the distance. One bear was just sleeping on the ice some 300 metres in front of us and we decided to stop the engines and hopefully he would visit us as he woke up. He never did show standing on his hind legs as he was trying to make out what he was investigating. After some time he just continued off in the horizon. We must have been very interesting because not too long after he was back to give us another show. Peder made us an excellent dinner and maybe the smell of it caught the interest of our next visitor. This time it was a beautiful female bear, she was a bit more relaxed and gave us great opportunities to get creative with our cameras. Later Mats invited us to actually walk on the sea ice to experience the polar bears habitat. While on the ice we spotted ivory gulls circling around looking for food that the polar bears might have left. Less than 1000km from the North Pole we decided to stay the night and drift with the pack ice. But as we were waiting we had three amazing experiences. First, we saw a large, young male in the distance, he came directly at us with impressive speed. His intense curiosity led us to believe that perhaps he had never seen humans before; at times, our guides had to tell him off to deter him from trying to get on the ship! Absolutely healthy and beautiful he gave us a good

6 DAY 4 PACK ICE AND KARL XII ISLAND Birds, hibernating bears and The Hunt 18 JULY 2016 During the night we had another visit but it was brief and the crew decided to let us sleep. As the wind picked up and the fog started moving in, we decided to start sailing south and out of the ice. It took us some time to navigate out and on our way we saw at least one minke whale breaching in the open ice leads. We spotted kittiwake, pomarine skua, great skua, Arctic skua, Brunnich guillemot, ivory gull, glaucous gull, and fulmar. Lots of birdlife today! As we sailed out of the ice edge we still couldn t see the northern islands of Svalbard in the distance. We set bearing for Karl XII Island, the sea swell picked up so most of us decided to take a midday nap. As we reached Karl XII, a mystical fog surrounded the top of the bird cliff. We were cruising around in the Zodiacs looking for stranded bears. On years with low ice conditions it is not rare that polar bears get stranded on isolated islands with no way of getting off until some ice might drift by. Knowing that there are bears on the island we searched for movements. Unfortunately the first bear we found was no longer living, laying absolutely still, half buried on the beach. This bear might have been stranded, leading to death by starvation, or it may have drowned as it tried to swim away searching for better hunting grounds. It must have been washed up here on the beach only a few hours before we discovered its body. With hundreds of kittiwakes circling the bird cliff, we continued our Zodiac cruise and saw a bear sleeping behind a rock. It only lifted its head to have a look at us; conserving energy these stranded bears will spend most of their time in an almost hibernating state. We landed on the beach and Mats and Oskar gave us some history stories about Nobile s air ship expedition over the North Pole in 1928, a story that ended in a rescue mission here close to this very island. With the wind picking up from the east we headed westwards towards Hinlopen Strait. We watched the Arctic episode of BBC s series The Hunt and after we were discussing with Oskar about his experiences during the filming years, getting a glimpse into all the hard work behind the scenes of these massive productions.

7 DAY 5 ISLAND VISITS Nordaustlandet, Hinlopen Strait, Murchinson Fjord, Kinnvika, Kross Island, Alkefjellet 19 JULY 2016 We headed out in the Zodiacs today to have a look at the walrus haul out point on Ringertz Island, and just as Oskar said it looked like the weather would improve it started raining As we came closer, we could not see any walruses so we decided to change our plan and visited the Swedish-Finnish science station Kinnvika instead. This station was established in 1957 during the international polar year and is now almost completely abandoned. Later we cruised in the Zodiac s around the islands looking for wildlife on our way to see the Pomor cross on Kross Island. We could not spot any wildlife; actually we could not see anything at all as the sea, wind and rain were obscuring our vision. A few of us were very happy when we could spot a cross on the island, Finally the wet and cold trip was over!, however, Mats told us that this cross was not good enough and we continued our way to Kross Island to see the better cross. It turned out to be a quite nice little hike up the island and we saw many Arctic terns and a few chicks. The evening was spent at Alkefjellet where the huge Brunnich guillemot colony was both impressive and rewarding. Apart from the beautiful cliffs and the massive amounts of birds flying all around and over us, we witnessed some impressive behaviour. Right in front of us a glaucous gull hunted down and killed an adult kittiwake. We also witnessed the predator sweep by the guillemots disturbing the adults so that the new hatched chicks would fall off the steep cliffs and drop into the sea where they were swallowed in one big gulp. Further down the cliffs we got really close to an Arctic fox with an adult guillemot in its mouth, seemingly relaxed we got very close and got some great photographs. Our next landing was on Gyldén Island in Wahlenberg fjorden. We hiked along the beach with Arctic terns and chicks everywhere. We also saw red-breasted phalarope, turnstone with chicks, purple sandpiper, skuas and pinkfooted goose.

8 DAY 6 NORDAUSLANDET BRÅSVELLBREEN AND TORELLNESET Icebergs, ice cliffs and walrus 20 JULY 2016 As we woke up we could see our ship being surrounded by large icebergs. The majority of these bergs have been calving off the 190km long Nordaustlandet icecap. Parts of this icecap have started surging, pushing out huge amounts of ice every day. Our plan was to do a Zodiac cruise around the icebergs but unfortunately the heavy fog made it impossible to safely do so. We decided to stay on the Freya and watch the icebergs from the warm ship. As we got closer to the part of the icecap called Bråsvellbreen we got out in the Zodiacs to cruise closer to the ice cliff and get a sense of its size. Here the melting summer ice creates melt water channels and comes off the ice cliff as waterfalls. We were suddenly reminded of why we don t get too close to the glaciers, as quite large amount of ice suddenly calved off not too far from us. behind the large bulls. Bit more unusual was that the really young calves and their mothers also came fairly close. We could clearly see that Mats has been here before as one of the really large bulls seemed to be little bit crazy about him. After a short visit to the sleepy walruses that were hauled out on the beach, we started our long journey back towards Longyearbyen. As our visit to Phipps Island was pretty foggy, and we could not see any walruses on Ringertz Island, we decided to do a landing on Torellneset. And today we were lucky enough to witness a really magical moment with the walruses. We landed on the beach and sat down close to the surf. We didn t have to sit there long before the inquisitive walruses came up really close to the beach. The younger ones were little bit nervous but as the adults dared to come right up to us, they also had to get a better look at us from

9 DAY 7 LIEFDEFJORDEN Bear family and glaciers 21 JULY 2016 Today, we woke up in Liefdefjorden, and after breakfast we launched the Zodiacs and found an old, skinny male bear walking along the shoreline on Reindyrsflya. He seemed to be in pretty bad shape and had been tagged by scientists, so we quickly left him. We continued scouting for wildlife around And Islands. The captain sailed the Freya further into the fjord and Mark and Kerry spotted a female with a 2.5 years old cub on Lerner Islands. Everyone quickly finished lunch and we went into the Zodiacs again. The bear family swam across two islands and looked very well fed, which was nice to see considering the state of our morning bear. Liefdefjorden is truly a beautiful place; we cruised around some very impressive icebergs. The colours were amazing and the size gave us an idea about some recent glacier activity. Due to strong winds we decided that it was better to cruise along the Monaco Glacier on board the Freya and we were lucky to witness a calving from the impressive glacier. As we sailed out towards more open water we were accompanied by a large pod of belugas. Some of us also saw a few minke whales.

10 DAY 8 NORTHWEST SPITSBERGEN Walrus, bears and whales 22 JULY 2016 We started the day in Holmia Bukta where we were hoping to spot some seals in front of the glacier. Maybe they didn t like the cold and wet weather, because it looked like there were none to be found. We continued our Zodiac cruise to the next fjord, Fugle Fjorden. The fog was thick but we still managed to find a big male walking along the shoreline. He seemed completely unfazed by our company and we spent some time with him. Later we continued further into the fjord and Svidtjov glacier. Lots of glacial ice in the water and as we shut the engines off we could hear the crackling sound as the air bubbles in the ice were released. We even got to see a calving from the glacier. On the way back to the Freya we took some photographs of the puffins in the fog. Our next stop was in Magdalena Fjorden. Finally Alex got the chance to do the polar plunge and, to our surprise he did it not just once, but four times! We then hiked up to the little auk colony. It took us some time to get up the steep hill but it was rewarding as the little auks were flying just around and above us. The view over the fjord and the glacier was pretty magical with the fog covering the top of the mountains and rolling down the valleys. On our way back to the Freya we stopped to visit the walrus colony with a nice glacier backdrop.

11 DAY 9 ISFJORDEN, YMER BUKTA, TRYGGHAMNA & ALKHORNET Spending time with the Arctic fox family 23 JULY 2016 Our last day, and what a day it was! The trip could not have had a better ending. First we landed next to the Esmark glacier in Ymer bukta. Here we hiked up just next to the glacier as it slides down the land into the water where we could see how the glacier forms the landscape. Nice to have a leg stretch after Peder s great food, and Jane got some steps counted for her competition. After lunch we visited Alkhornet in Trygghamna. As we walked up towards the bird cliff we got close to several reindeers. Almost tame, we could get really close with our lenses for some great close up photos. Our guides knew that there was an Arctic fox family living under the cliff. We patiently watched the den for about 30 minutes before Mats spotted the male family member resting in a calm and quiet area, a bit away from the den. An absolutely stunning example, he was very large and well fed. He wasn t bothered by our presence at all and gave us some extremely rare moments. on our way we saw that the fox cubs were out of the den! We couldn t believe our luck as we got to spend about 45 minutes in such close proximity to a family of seven cubs! There was a lot of interesting behaviour and looking at the smiles on our guides we understood that we were extremely lucky to witness this moment. Perfectly timed we spotted a couple of Brunnich guillemots chicks making their first jump into the sea. The chicks were followed by their parents who guided them in the right direction and we could see them successfully land in the water. On our way back to the Freya we had our last Mr. Bear walking on land. What a day! Satisfied we headed back to the ship, but

12 DAY 10 DISEMBARK SHIP AND DEPART LONGYEARBYEN Saying goodbye 24 JULY 2016 This morning everyone woke aboard the ship, home for the past 9 days. After breakfast everyone said their goodbyes to fellow passengers and crew before gathering up luggage and heading to the airport for your flights home. What an incredible Arctic experience had by all!

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