The Endeavour began to bump into the pack ice at about 0600 this morning and then made her way along the pack edge south of Edgeoya, Svalbard in search of polar bears and seals. At 0715 we were all called to the deck to see our first bear of the trip—and as it turned out, it was an incredible polar bear day! In all we spent over 4 hours with 6 bears and had an incredible finale’ towards the end of dinner. As we rushed from the dining room, the ship crept closer and closer to a resting juvenile bear until it stretched, yawned and looked curiously up at this enormous steel vessel. As we continued to slowly approach the bear it continued to slowly approached us—leaping from ice floe to ice floe. Finally she, for it was a she, came so close to us that the people on the bow had to lean way over the rail to see her tucked close into the ship’s bow. For almost an hour cameras clicked away and hushed voices whispered expletives as the bear sniffed the air, lay down on the ice, or leisurely walked along the floes within point and shoot camera range. It could not have been a better look at this master predator of the polar sea.
The first 5 bears were all large males that were out on the ice searching for seals. The last, however, was a 2 to 3 year old female that was weaned from her mother either earlier this year or last year. She was beautifully white with coal black eyes and looked to be pretty fat and happy. It is good to see young bears in such good condition as mortality in the first two years can be as high as 70%. It will be a challenge, indeed, to keep up the pace of this day of incredible wildlife sightings—but you can bet we’ll try!
