Pack Ice off Edgeøya Island
As if it were coming out of a dream, a polar bear walks towards us across the whiteness of frozen ocean that is the pack ice. We nudge our ship into the edge of the pack and wait. The furry apparition walking on solid water sniffs the air and approaches. Meandering and jumping across rafted floes, the bear comes to within a few feet of the awed silent souls on the decks of the National Geographic Endeavour.
Sleepy from nocturnal sightings, we have now made eye contact with a polar bear to begin our ‘day.’ During what was technically ‘night,’ wake up calls lifted people from their dreams to see polar bears in the bright hours after midnight. Later today we would find ourselves riding open water in dense fog (towards a landing on remote Hopen Island), making day seem more like night, as night had been more like day.
Curiously, we found our middle-of-the-‘night’ bears in wide open water, hauled up on a few ice islands there. On one floe two sets of three little black dots of nose and eyes emerged behind their mama bear’s massive coat, cubs just a few months out of their snow maternity den.
After the white beast emerging from the white landscape came to us this morning, we realized that we had now seen twelve polar bears in the past 24 hours! Not only for the number of sightings, but also for the diversity of high quality encounters, this past day has been an extraordinary one. We have seen a bear with a seal kill, a bear swimming beside the ship in the fog, a mother with two new cubs, and now, a bear that came right up to us!
It’s the same planet, but completely another world, as anyone who’s been in icy polar regions would agree. The pack ice is a surreally beautiful place where nights can be days, reality dreams, where bears can walk on the ocean right to your ship.
As if it were coming out of a dream, a polar bear walks towards us across the whiteness of frozen ocean that is the pack ice. We nudge our ship into the edge of the pack and wait. The furry apparition walking on solid water sniffs the air and approaches. Meandering and jumping across rafted floes, the bear comes to within a few feet of the awed silent souls on the decks of the National Geographic Endeavour.
Sleepy from nocturnal sightings, we have now made eye contact with a polar bear to begin our ‘day.’ During what was technically ‘night,’ wake up calls lifted people from their dreams to see polar bears in the bright hours after midnight. Later today we would find ourselves riding open water in dense fog (towards a landing on remote Hopen Island), making day seem more like night, as night had been more like day.
Curiously, we found our middle-of-the-‘night’ bears in wide open water, hauled up on a few ice islands there. On one floe two sets of three little black dots of nose and eyes emerged behind their mama bear’s massive coat, cubs just a few months out of their snow maternity den.
After the white beast emerging from the white landscape came to us this morning, we realized that we had now seen twelve polar bears in the past 24 hours! Not only for the number of sightings, but also for the diversity of high quality encounters, this past day has been an extraordinary one. We have seen a bear with a seal kill, a bear swimming beside the ship in the fog, a mother with two new cubs, and now, a bear that came right up to us!
It’s the same planet, but completely another world, as anyone who’s been in icy polar regions would agree. The pack ice is a surreally beautiful place where nights can be days, reality dreams, where bears can walk on the ocean right to your ship.
