SVALBARD PHOTO TOUR – Mai 2015

We are on Svalbard in Longyearben, the capital, an ugly little town in the Isfjord on the west coast of the island of Spitsbergen at latitude 78°N. Only 1338km to the North Pole! They say there are more polar bears here than inhabitants (about 2200), so our chances of finding one should be pretty good.

DAY 1: Monday – board ship

We board our ship the MS Stockholm in late afternoon, and will sail south during the evening and night. We are, as Shem said, a cosmopolitan group. 11 photographers from 3 continents: Africa, Australia and Europe. This is somewhat like one of the big brother soaps, 12 strangers in a confined space (our cabin is about 2x3m), without contact to the outer world, but we’ll be okay, we all have the same goal: a great photo of a polar bear.

DAY 2: Tuesday – the first polar bear

At 05:15 there’s a knock on the door, polar bear in sight! Well not really, the expert on board has a telescope, magnifies 75x, that would be a 3500mm lens or so, my eyes are not that good! The boat slowly moves in his direction, we now see him, he’s killed a seal and is eating, but abandons it as we get closer. Our first polar bear sighting!

We get closer and closer, he seems rather skittish but as we stop the boat his curiosity gets the best of him and he gets closer. We all get lovely shots, the scenery is great, the sun is shining, the bear mirrors in the spaces of open water he passes. WOW! This is so beautiful, we are so lucky to be here and see this! The only minus is that the researchers here put collars on the bears and numbers, big numbers on their bums, they look like football players. This one is Nr.22.

In the afternoon we move to the van Mijenfjord. We board the zodiacs and go ashore to stretch our legs and do a bit of landscape photography. Ronald, our expert carries a rifle, but there’s not an animal in sight (unfortunately). It is rather cloudy now, not the best light to photograph but we try. Who cares, we had the great light this morning at the polar bear sighting. We head back to the fjord we were this morning, a mother with 2 cubs has been spotted there, they made a kill and have now moved up the hill to sleep. We’ll try our luck tomorrow.

DAY 3: Wednesday – polar bear with cubs

Oh shit, it’s 04:00 and there’s a knock on our door, end of my beauty sleep! The mum and cubs are moving down the hill and are headed towards the kill site. By the time we are all awake and geared up for our zodiac tour, things have changed. A male has shown up, chased off the mum and her cubs and is eating.

The shoreline is a meter high wall of ice, we take turns in standing up, when we stand we can just see over it. The short ones get to stand on the box J. It gets better and better as mum and her cubs return and now chase the male off. Mum is still eating as the male approaches the two cubs, mum doesn’t even look up, will he harm them, kill them? The cubs try to look fierce and threatening, he keeps closing in. The most incredible thing happens, our experts almost fall off the boat in sheer amazement, the polar bears rub noses, then let him join in on the meal. Meanwhile on our zodiac it sound somewhat like click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.

So now we have Nr.24, the mum, and the cubs, Nr.25 &26. And the male that joined in was the Nr.22 we saw yesterday.

After lunch we go ashore in a bay called Ingeborg fjellet, it’s just north of the Akselöya island we were at yesterday. We do some land and -seascape photography, this time in wonderful weather. This is an inspiring and beautiful place. From here we sail south during dinner and most of the evening.

DAY 4: Thursday – tiny cub on the run

We’ve seen 5 polar bears in 32 hours, and we’re only at the start of day 3! Their timing is disastrous, this time the knock at the door is at 02:00. A polar bear with tiny cub about 600m in front of our bow. Nr. 53.

We are as far into the solid fast ice (called fast ice because it is fastened to the land), as the captain dared, hope she will come to us. She gets up, but bad luck this time, she moves away. Back to bed. Another knock at 04:00, they are now at the back of the boat, damn, moving away again. The weather is lousy, totally overcast, cold and windy, it is starting to snow softly. The temperature is only -1°C or so but the wind adds a considerable chill factor, it really is cold. I go back to bed again, my dear husband stays in the hope they will return, promises to come and get me when and if they do. They do! A big male shows up and whilst moving away from him, they head towards our boat again. I arrive on deck just in time, the two of them start running, pass us at about 20m distance, and within 2min they are out of photo range and soon after that out of sight.

Please let us sleep now! We actually get 2½ hours at a stretch this time, such luxury. At breakfast everybody is so quiet and pale that the plan for this morning is to stay put and sleep, a very good plan indeed! We get up and photograph at whatever hour the bears show up, the sun never sets, you lose all track of time and suffer from lack of sleep, it is a hard life. Nobody complains, we’ve had such fantastic sightings.

In the afternoon we cruise by the Samarinebreen glacier, again, too much ice to get close. From there to the next glacier, they have one around every corner anyway. This one is called Burgerbukta, and we will definitely remember it. The captain parks the boat quite far into the ice then turns the motor off. Now this is a novelty. They put out the ladder and tell us to leave ship. Not because anything is wrong, just for fun, so we can walk on the ice. Shem takes a group photo, we all line up in front of the ship. It is rather awkward to walk on the ice. The upper layer is very soft and often you sink in 4-5cm, the first few times everybody thinks they are going to crash right through and walk as if they have their pants full… The experts guarantee us that will not happen, they measured the ice and it is at least 50cm thick

Soon we all get a little cheekier and head further and further away from the ship trying to find the best angle for a great photo of our ship in the ice. This is such a fun outing! From here we move further south, do two more stops to photograph walrus on the pack ice (which is the free floating ice, lots of it) and just as we head for bed at 23:00 the next call comes : polar bear with kill ahead. Honest, you don’t get to sleep on this ship!

But it was worth it, a bear with a kill in a field of sea ice with reaches to the horizon, the sun slowly setting in the background. Setting may be a big word, the best it does is go down to about 30° above the horizon. Our daily routine is photograph when you can, sleep when you can!

DAY 5: Friday – “un bear able”

This is our no bear day, unbearable! We sleep till 07:30, such a luxury! During the night the captain decided the ice was too thick to continue and turned the boat around. So that’s why the sound of crushing ice stopped! Today we do some glacier cruising. At the Recherchefjorden we anchor in a very quiet bay, the sun is shining, we are tended to take our jackets off and lie in the sun, this is what spring should be like.

From here it is 3 nautical miles to the glacier, so zip up your jackets, pull the beanie over your ears, and off we go at full throttle. Shit, it’s cold, the sun has gone, just clouds and wind, the weather changes so fast here. The ride takes about 15min. We walk on the glaciers terminal moraine and try to sneak up to a couple of seals, by the time we get there they are gone. So we try again, this time the Killiwakes in front of the glacier, I get a lovely shot when they all take off with the glacier as a background.

After lunch the next glacier, the Fridtjovbreen. We go quite a way into the ice till we get stuck, 15min photo time the captain says. Shem shows us how to use the graduated filter, it really does make a difference, suddenly the grey mess up there shows some interesting contrasts.

As we leave here a long journey awaits us, way past Longyearben and the entrance to Isfjord to an island where there should be a walrus haul out, hundreds of them. The bad thing, we will only get here by 23:00 or so. The good thing: this means we get another night of sleep, at least 6 hours!

DAY 6: Saturday – walrus for breakfast

After breakfast we take the zodiac to the shore and walk towards them. The closest distance allowed is 30m and Ronald is very strict about this, till here and no further. It’s close enough, in the background the mainland with mountains and glaciers, in the foreground a messy heap of snoring and farthing walrus.

Annette calls from the beach, there is one of them approaching from the water, curious, as most animals here, he swims up to us, really close!

We cruise along the Dahlbreen glacier after lunch, at last we found a glacier which hasn’t got a whole load of fast ice in front of it. The sun is shining, the glacier lights up, we see every cliff, crack and crease in the ice, there are little bits floating around in front of it, the sky in the background is a bright dark blue, such a lovely contrast.

From here we travel to the next fjord called St. Jonsfjord, the trip there is a pleasure cruise, warm and sunny, an incredibly beautiful landscape all around us, we are all very happy. This calls for a celebration! Some drink G&T in the lounge, others have a glass of champagne on the bow. Roland is seriously worried we will not be able to do the next outing if we keep up drinking like this, it is only 15:00.

DAY 7: Sunday – am I becoming a birder after all ?

We are again anchored at an unbelievably beautiful, and very quiet and peaceful spot in ……. Today we will go ashore, hike up a hill to a bird cliff. At its foot is grass, or at least something green resembling grass, and this normally attracts a lot of reindeer. Very good, I would love to see more of those. There should be arctic foxes here too. We only see a few birds…

We move on to our next spot, about a 4 hour cruise. At 15:30 we get a lecture by Shem, after that the next outing. He actually explains lightroom to us, lots of useful tips and tricks. The next stop is at another famous bird cliff, its structure, and that of the other mountains around us is amazing. At the top there’s lots of birds flying around, fewer at the bottom. We find a nest of black guillemots and watch a gull steal eggs from it. There are puffins flying to and from the cliffs, the best and closest shots are those of the puffins in the water.

DAY 8 : Monday – all good things come to an end

Time to go home, it was a great trip with spectacular sightings: 9 polar bears, walrus, seals, reindeer and lots of birds and the amazing little puffins. An amazing ship with a friendly crew and an excellent cook, and good company all the way. Thank you Shem and all my fellow photographers, we had an awesome arctic experience!

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Copyright photo and text by Astrid & Juerg Bluemel for bluemelphoto.ch