Wrap-up: photographing polar bears --- first find your polar bear!
For at least a week after leaving the Ocean Adventurer, my nightly dreams were of the Arctic: big wide-open spaces, the curiosity of polar bears, the size and bulk of walruses, and birds by the thousands. All of this amongst mountains and glaciers, and the ice – that wonderful, beautiful and colourful state of water that supports all life in the Arctic.
I’ve learned that it takes time to process the experiences of being in such a different environment for four weeks – hence this trip’s final blog post so many weeks later.
Starting my journey with the road trip in Scotland was great – it is such a beautiful part of the world, and those 5 days were not just fun and interesting, but confirmed that I could still travel with all my camera gear. It was a perfect way to decompress after a busy and somewhat “interesting” end to 2017 & start to this year.
From beautiful Edinburgh, through the gorgeous town of North Queensferry, St Andrews with its huge ruin-cathedral and the famous beach (ok, and golf course), and on to Pitlochry and my beautiful hotel room with a turret - all fantastic. And then north to Inverness to see dolphins at Chanonry Point - where I experienced good Scottish rain. We explored Pitlochry the following day including Edradour Distillery with an early morning tasting, and then made our way to the granite city, Aberdeen.
Once there, it was great to catch up with good friends and to get ready to board the aptly named Ocean Adventurer. We were about to set off on a new adventure, turning left out of Aberdeen Harbour, and travelling far, far north to new and amazing places. It was a wonderful feeling to walk up the gangway and see Annie, Woody and Colin, Quark crew who I’ve travelled with before – excellent hugs all around!
Working through my photos reminds me of what we saw, where we were and what we did over that 3.5 weeks. We were in the Zodiacs at least every second day, sometimes more than once a day – these great little work-horses take us into and close to places that the ship can’t reach.
One afternoon we “beached” our zodiac (deliberately) on sea-ice in front of a massive glacier, and watched four reindeer frighten a polar bear; as we circumnavigated Svalbard’s largest island, Spitsbergen, we saw walrus by the hundreds, hauled out on ice floes, unfussed by us motoring close by; and one morning in relatively bumpy water, we watched a polar bear climb out of the sea, wander on the sea-ice and then roll around, four paws in the air, drying its coat.
The ship was a great place to view our Arctic world whether we were stopping near a glacier in the evening, watching birds flying on and off the water, their wings reflected in the still, mirrored surface, or sailing down wide or narrow fjords, jagged black and white mountains rising out of the water, while glaciers in their valleys moved at, well, glacial pace, slowly squishing ice into amazing shapes before large and small icebergs broke off into the sea and floated away with the currents.
We saw thousands of Brunich’s Guillemots on the cliffs at Hinlopen and were visited by that curious polar bear who really, really wanted to join us on the ship.
Evidence of the impact of the changing climate was clear. The sea-ice was much further north than at the same time 3 and 7 years earlier (ice chart comparisons). Glaciers in Svalbard are all retreating and although some of this is over 100+ years, that’s not a long time in human history.
The main reason for my choosing this trip was to photograph polar bears. Although Quark, careful not to raise expectations, had headlined this “Spitsbergen Photography: In Search of Polar Bears,” for me this was about finding them, not just searching for them.
Before each trip I develop a “pic list” that's always in easy reach in my camera bag. It’s a combination of memory-jog for technical things (check sensor for spots, check battery, take spare cards, high ISO for speed etc), and a list of photos that I’d love to be able to get.
This trip included “polar bear – from zodiac, from ship, on ice (tight), on ice (wide), in water, jumping, on ice floes.” Of course this assumes that everything will line up – first we’ll find the polar bear, ideally relatively close by, and then I’ll be in the right place at the right moment, with camera kit set up to capture it all.
When it all aligns, it is such a joy – a laugh-out-loud, smiling joy!
It’s fun to go back to my “pic-list” now and realise that, other than “in water,” I actually shot each of these and more!
Including that overly curious polar bear, I saw 12 (the ship’s number is higher), and every sighting was a joy: the one peering out from behind some chunky ice, a splotch of snow on its snout; the late night polar bear (11:30pm) quietly walking down a mountain side in the bright sunshine, its footprints clearly visible in the deep snow; and the one lying beside the remnants of its kill, drifting off to sleep. Even the mother bear standing motionless for hours at a seal breathing hole - although I could only see her through a spotting scope, with one of her two cubs snoozing nearby, it was amazing.
Not everything on my “pic list” worked out: there were no whales (that I saw), the one Arctic fox was just a blur way up high on a cliff (although great to see without my camera), and the bearded seals were also a long way away.
As with any visit to remote areas, there are unplanned “got it” and “missed it” photos. I watched but didn’t photograph that puffin quietly sitting on the water, suddenly dive as it was bombarded by an Arctic Tern. Then there was that row of 7 guillemots sitting on the edge of the sea-ice – by the time I raised the camera to take the shot, it was 6 guillemots with a gap, a bit like a missing tooth.
The walrus complied (“on ice, on land-awake, swimming”) as did many, many birds, including puffins high on a cliff in Fair Isle, our first landing. I climbed that hill slowly & quietly, acknowledging the occasional sheep quietly grazing with their lambs nearby, all seemingly unphased by our presence. High above the sheep, the cute, colourful puffins were flying in and out of their burrows – very, very fast.
I reminded myself to be patient & learn their patterns. A perfectly placed tussock of grass was a great spot to sit, watch and wait for the right moments. Upping the frames/second, watching the Sony’s tracking doing what it does so cleverly, pressing the shutter and, yay! Sharp photos – at least some of the time!
Meeting interesting people is one of the joys of these trips. People come from all over the world – it’s always fun to see who you’ll meet at breakfast (or lunch or dinner) and on the Zodiacs. In fact that’s how I met Virginia (Antarctic 2009/10) and Sue M (Antarctic 2008).
Sailing north from Longyearbyen to find sea-ice and polar bears, we had 3 world-leading wild-life photographers with us: Sue Flood, Cindy Miller Hopkins and Patrick Dykstra (videographer). How lucky to be with such accomplished photographers and be able to learn from them – it was great catching up with Sue again (we'd met on the Antarctic 2009/10 trip) and Cindy was on the first leg of this trip from Scotland to Svalbard.
Patrick joined us for breakfast our first morning out of Longyearbyen, wearing a “Blue Planet II” beanie. Why? Well he shot the manta ray sequence in the Maldives, and is well known for his underwater videography with blue whales and orca. Our trip was a very "soft" trip for him and something he wouldn’t normally do. It was fun and very interesting to get to know him just a little, and to learn about some of his encounters with orca and polar bear - seriously scary.
What's next? It is such a privilege and thrill to be able to get so close to wild animals. While many stay well away, others are curious and come towards us. We are alert to signs of discomfort and distress, but inevitably we do change their behaviour by being in their space.
And so since Sue and Cindy lead photography trips to other parts of the world, my plan is to join Sue in 2019 on the Great Bear Rainforest trip (Canada) and both in 2020 in Zambia (Africa). After that? Keep watching!