A Foggy Day

 Monday, July 27th was...foggy.  

We were supposed to do a landing in the morning, but it was quite foggy, and while the expedition team was peering into the fog in order to determine if it was clear enough to land, they spotted a polar bear.  The ship was too close to make a general announcement (the speakers are both inside and outside the ship), so they sent a quiet "ding-dong, ding-dong" to the interior speakers.  This is the signal that wildlife has been spotted, so there was a scramble to leave breakfast, grab jackets and cameras and head up to the top deck.

All of the team were there, helping people find the bear and cub....but there's only so much you can do. "See that snow patch? No, not that one--THAT one. Find the 3 boulders to the right of it, and then go diagonally down to the sandy-colored rock....."

Lars and I have decided that the polar bears are some sort of mass hallucination.  Everyone else seems to be able to se them, but we cannot. At least we saw that one on the crossing from Greenland. 

As we couldn't have any excursions, we got some lectures.  We learned about the formation of sea-ice, and how it differs from glacial ice.  We learned about the now-extinct Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis), who lives on in the word "penguin", as early explorers in the Southern Ocean named the birds they found there after the one they were familiar with.

And we learned about the Ivory Gull. This bird lives its entire life on ice. It eats fish at the edge of pack and drift ice, or scavenges from polar bear kills, even eating the spilled blood on the ice. It migrates only as far as the edge of the ice pack, so it gets as far south as southern Greenland, northern Canada, and the Russian coast.

Adults are pure white, except for their beak (blue/yellow), and their feet and eyes (black). Their plump profile is a lot like pigeons, rather than looking like other gulls.

Here's the weird thing.  Many of them nest directly on the ice, building nests of seaweed and moss, but some live in cliff colonies, like the Guillemots, though not as dense.  Some of these cliff colonies are on "nunataks"--mountains that stick up through an ice cap--and are up to 30 kilometers/40 miles from the nearest open water.  So they often nest far from a food source!  Good thing they are very capable flyers.

At least one bird was tracked from Northeast Greenland, migrated south and then up the west coast.  It stayed there VERY late, finally leaving about a month after all of the other tagged birds had left.  Rather than repeat the normal migration path, it chose to fly straight across the Greenland ice sheet!  This took it most of a month.  It rested several times on the way, and finally arrived back at its nesting spot in Northeast Greenland.  What an accomplishment! There's no way to know if it was just this lone bird, or if there was a small group of them.

The population has decreased by 50% over the past 50 years, and they are considered to be at a tipping point which could go either way.  Because they feed on bear kills, they are prone to accumulate heavy metals as if they were an apex predator.

You can read more here:

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Ivory_Gull/overview

Sheila has added this bird to her "must see" bucket list

Irrelevant side note... one of the guides mentioned in passing that there are penguins that live in a forest in New Zealand. Look up the Fiordland Penguin for some really odd pictures. 

Alkefjellet

 After dinner on Sunday, Sheila bundled up well and went for a late Zodiac cruise to the bird cliffs at Alkefjellet (Guillemot Cliff).  This is a nesting spot for tens of thousands of Brunnich's Guillemots, aka Thick-billed Murres. 

The photos aren't great--Zodiacs moving in 3 dimensions make poor platforms for photography in less-than bright conditions.  It was far from dark out, but her camera just wasn't quite up to the task.  Zoom in if you like, but things are pretty blurry.  You can still get a good idea that every single available ledge has a bird on it.  Possibly with an egg or chick...if they are facing the wall, they have young.  If they are facing out, they may have lost either egg or chick.

View from ship...we're headed toward that dark cliff

For anyone interested in such things, the cliffs are Dolerite (aka Diabase), which is akin to basalt, but doesn't form such neat, hexagonal columns. It's an intrusion into limestone, which causes marble to form in the contact zones (contact metamorphosis).  It's not GOOD marble (too full of inclusions), but it IS marble.

There was theoretically a polar bear with cub toward the top of the cliff, but Sheila didn't see them.  She DID see 2 Arctic Foxes lower down. One is right at the VERY top of the snow, pretending to be part of the rocks above.

And there's another one in both of these pics....can you find it? It's quite blurry--moving Zodiac plus moving fox plus low light equals blurry photos.

Is this better?

Polar Desert

 I'd never heard of a polar desert, have you?? Gotta say, the scenery is surprisingly desert-like. The ship made 2 stops today, one for a walk and another for a Zodiac cruise through some lagoons.  We're still coughing, so opted not to do either, though Sheila is planning to bundle up and go on the 3rd excursion to the bird-cliffs after dinner.

There's an issue in dressing properly for the walks. If you are warm enough for the Zodiac ride to the landing, you'll be far too warm for anything more than a slow stroll. It's tricky to take off layers, because you're supposed to keep your life-jacket on (in case of a sudden polar bear-induced evacuation). Plus, your outer layer needs to be waterproof, which is also not especially breathable. We both got very much too warm on the walk to see the walrus.

There are 3 groups of walkers on every excursion--Long walkers, Moderate walkers, and Beachcombers. Long walk is 2-2 1/2 hours, Medium 1 1/2-2, Beachcombers 1 hour (approx.).  There are buildings left from a Finnish/Swedish meteorological project for the International Geophysical Year from July 1957 to the end of December 1958. The buildings have been used for a couple more research projects since then.

Zodiacs on the beach, Beachcombers by the building, Moderates higher up.

Single Zodiac is watching the landscape for polar bears.

Kayaking group with guardian Zodiac

Long walkers headed up the hill.

You can rent the "Starfire" (12 passengers, 20 crew) for a mere $773,500/week

https://www.yachtcharterfleet.com/luxury-charter-yacht-22968/starfire.htm

We then moved on and got yet more black-and-white mountains.

Longyearbyen

 Today, the ship docked in Longyearbyen (literally "Long Year City"), which claims to be the world's northernmost town, despite there being a couple of settlements farther north right on Svalbard.  But maybe if your population drops to 30 or fewer every winter, you don't count as a "town"?

Everyone got off and was driven into town by bus.  We could technically have stayed aboard, but they would not have served lunch, so we went along with the rest. We could take our time exploring, while the others only had a couple of hours before returning to the buses to go to the airport.

The bus dropped us at the city center--a shopping mall, large Coop superstore, and a scattering of hotels and restaurants.  Longyearbyen has a surprisingly robust "foodie" culture, it turns out.

City Center

Main road through town, with walking path on one side only

The Svalbard Museum was a 5-minute walk down from the city center, and proved to be a great way to spend a couple of hours.  It was very well-organized with lots of interesting exhibits, with signage in both Norwegian and English. 

Trapper's cabin in the background, part of a Russian Orthodox cross in the foreground

Harp Seal

Artefacts from a trapper's cabin

Very detailed model of a walrus hunt

There was a Swedish folk-dance group in the 70s!

Ringed Seal & Common Eiders

Polar Bear & Narwhal tusk

"Bird Cliff"

Puffins, Guillemots, Arctic Fox

Arctic Ptarmingan & Pink-footed Geese

Lars & Polar Bear

Trapper's cabin from the 1700s

The history is long and convoluted, beginning in the 1600s and involving Dutch, Russian, Norwegian and British whalers, seal-hunters, trappers, and eventually coal mining.  Ownership was disputed for a long time, with a consortium of nations finally agreeing that Norway would have absolute sovereignty, but permit fishing and hunting rights to 8 other countries: Canada, France, Japan, Australia, Denmark, the US, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

After a couple of hours at the museum, we bought a couple of bird/wildlife books and headed back up to the 'city' for lunch.  

Pedestrian "street" so as not to always walk along the highway.

Mining remnants on the hill

Some serious avalanche protection

Svalbard's bunad

We had a tip from Gaby, one of the guides, that there was great Thai food to be had, so we did that. Sheila chose a favorite dish, Pad Prik Khing, based on the photo of green beans, carrots, and bell peppers, but was somewhat disappointed to receive only chicken and rice. On further thought, fresh veg are at a premium here, so it made sense to not "waste" them on tourists, and lunch still very tasty (if a tad too spicy--medium was the least amount of spice offered).

We shopped for a few necessities at the pharmacy and Coop, then went to the Visitor Center to call for a taxi back to the ship, where we arrived about an hour before the incoming passengers and their luggage and general chaos. Lars took a bunch of photos while we waited for the taxi.

More avalanche fencing

Shortly after setting sail, there was a mandatory lifeboat drill.  Lars was thrilled by the experience, as you can see. But he made up for it with healthy choices from the dinner buffet.