Polar bears on pack ice

September 5

We spent the day cruising through drifting pack ice in the Wellington channel, 77 North latitude and 97 West longitude.  We are now north of the modern Northwest Passage route, further west than Hudson Bay and as far north as the Svalbard Archipelago. 

We saw Bearded Seals and Walrus on the ice before breakfast.  Just as we sat down with our breakfast, our trip leader announced that polar bears were  on the ice with a kill. When we arrived at the bridge, we saw three large adult polar bears with a kill and many scavenging gulls. It has been thought that polar bears are solitary, but we clearly observed a social behavior of the bears sharing. How frequently this occurs and under what circumstances is not known. One of the bears left the ice floe and swam away; we were reminded again how strong and fast they are as swimmers. The other two were still at the kill site as we departed.

Mid-morning a polar bear wandered onto an ice floe quite close to the ship. We were able to watch her scout for seals, sniffing the air, pounding the surface to check for breathing holes, laying down to wait by an inlet, and then moving out towards open water.  Polar bears primarily hunt for seals on the ice. Though they are strong, fast swimmers, a seal in the water can easily  escape them. 

Mid-afternoon yet another polar bear walked along an ice floe parallel to the ship’s port side. We are gradually acclimatizing; to this environment, going outside to get a better views in -2 degrees Celsius no longer seems all that cold! 

The navigational team on the ship is amazing. They control speed and direction very subtly as we near a seal or polar bears, to avoid spooking the animals. Because the ship is also a highly rated ice breaker, when they can’t avoid a piece of floating pack ice we just crunch through it. The crunch is always a bit of a surprise inside the ship though, as it comes with a slight shudder as well as the noise!  Often the fragments created tell their own story, with footprints of birds,  arctic foxes, or seal imprints recorded in the surface, or a stain of blood from an earlier kill. 

Pictured: the NG Endurance breaking pack ice, three feasting polar bears and waiting gulls, single female bear on the hunt (2)