Polar Bears in the Canadian High Arctic!

Our plan for this morning was to land at St Helena Island, home to a very large number of gulls (Thayer’s & Glaucous) as well as black guillemots and snow buntings. Mark, one of our ornithologists was hoping that we would be able to photograph the tags on many of the birds so that he could track them. The wake-up call was supposed to be at 5:30am with first zodiac at 6:00am (we were number 2 this morning).

At around 5am I felt a familiar bump and shudder – we were in ice, and had stopped. A quick look out the window confirmed that there were many large ice floes between us and St Helena. And about 15 minutes later, Cheli (Expedition Leader) told us that we wouldn’t be landing there today for three reasons: getting the zodiacs close to the island would be difficult, if we did get there we might not get back, and with the large numbers of ice floes there is a likelihood of polar bears.

Some people rolled over for more sleep – others, including me, headed to the bow. The wind was blowing at 20 knots or so and the air temperature was 2°C – but the wonderful thing about the bow on this ship is that there is a wind “shadow” close to the front edge. Getting there was somewhat unpleasant (“one hand for the ship” was vital), but once there at least we weren’t being buffeted by the wind.

Soon we were on our way again, breaking through the ice – a wonderful feeling and as mesmerising today as it had been the last time I was on the KK. We couldn’t really hear the next announcement other than something that sounded as if it included the words “polar bear.” Looking up to the Bridge we could see everyone looking out to port, so we did the same!

There it was – fast asleep on the ice – a beautiful polar bear. Our noisy ship woke it up, it sat up, looked at us, then stood up and decamped – I fear that we were a little too close and disturbed it in a way that is not really appropriate. But yes – I do have pics! It was quite far away, but much, much closer than yesterday’s. Some cropping and a little de-noising and the photos are not bad!

We’ve now travelled through Hell Gate, and Norwegian Bay – the intention had been that we would “flight-see” around the area using our newly arrived Canadian helicopters, but the wind was way too strong!

Why the Canadian helicopters? Now that we’re in Canada, the Government requires that only their helicopters be used, not our Russian ones. Two arrived yesterday after a very long journey from Resolute and we are getting to know the pilots. They are quite different to our Russian MI2’s, so we had a go at getting in and out – one is significantly easier than the other – one holds 3 passengers for flight-seeing, the other holds 4. This is a big difference from the Russian ones that each hold 6 for flight-seeing and 8 for point-to-point transfers. Excursions will be a little longer, but that’s all ok.

Later this afternoon another polar bear was visible on an ice floe ahead of us – apparently with a seal. We couldn’t get close enough to see it without binoculars, and breaking ice was not an option since it tends to spook them – not exactly reasonable when they’ve worked hard to hunt and retrieve a seal.

So it’s been a lazy day other than coming in and out, battling the wind and the cold. This evening is much calmer and we’ve just seen the sun setting behind mountains on the western side of the Sound. One helicopter is out doing some flight-seeing – I’ll wait to see what tomorrow brings.