dann müßte ich nicht mehr schrei'n
alles wär' so klar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIIGKV27FaY
I had to start this post with these words, because whenever polar bears are mentioned, this new wave song from my youth pops-up into my head.
Hi outside world,
The forth trip in a row that brings us around Svalbard (anyone who plays the game called Risk, knows that this is a vital island to own) is coming to an end, so it is high time that I wrote something about it.
It is so easy to forget that there is an outside world when you are floating on the ocean in a big metal box that is your work, recreation and home. Yep Michiel gets a bit in a funk sometimes. Lots and lots of people around me, but not too many meaningful relations and not too many people to open up to when there’s a bad day. The one person that I instantly became friends with left a couple of weeks ago and will not be back, that’s a bummer. I’m copying Sheri’s writing style a bit here in not only writing about the upsides of this work, but also the downsides.
I think I already wrote about the fact that my cabin is also my office, which makes it very hard to escape work. My phone is a number that rings in several spots (my cabin, the computer kiosk and the server room), and since reception is open till 22:30, they see no problem in calling me till that time. Thankfully my number is not published to the guests. My contract mentions a laughable 44 hour work week plus all the overtime needed to get the work done, so that’s a pretty vague deal, especially if you have some work ethic. Of course, there are plenty of people who work longer days than I do, but I have not yet experienced why they joke that IT Officer is the easiest job on board, because it hasn't been the case so far.
That said, people around me do encourage me to join the daily outings and go on shore once in a while. Yesterday for the first time in 2 weeks I did so and joined the long Athletic Hike which luckily lived up to its name (unlike a previous outing when we turned around after a mere 40 minutes) and was quite energizing. Unfortunately 1 member of our group (that’s me) did not get the memo and was wearing his hiking boots in stead of waterproof boots and soon had to deal with the consequences of doing a couple of stream crossings and sinking into ankle deep mud. I did not mind getting wet feet, but I was hearing a little disapproving voice of Sheri in the back of my head talking about setting a good example when you are part of the crew, and she would have been right.) Not to fear, no one scolded me for it, but instead all allowed me to make self deprecating jokes about the fact that I get out so seldom, that I am inexperienced. Our group had some 12 people in it and was led by our Expedition Leader, who has been an EL many times before, but not for our company. Because Sheri has been an EL several times now, I have a fairly good idea of what that job entails and admire people who are able to pull it off (especially knowing that all that responsibility only earns them a whopping 20 or 30 dollar per day more than someone hired as a Naturalist, who has a lot less responsibility and planning to do).
Apart from hiking boot-soaking moss and mud, we were rewarded by nice views of mountains and tundra, barnacle geese, snow buntings (Svalbard’s only songbird), my first reindeer and my first arctic fox. The arctic fox was interesting because it had a white and brown coat, since it had not totally switched over to his summer colors yet and what struck me was the fact that it seemed more curious than afraid of us. I’ve been told that that is because it has met so few humans, that it does not have reason to fear them (equating human with food is not the reason, because we are not allowed to have anything edible with us when we go on land).
Like in the Antarctic, they also have several species of skua here. The one is saw (oops I forgot the name) has a tail that is more like a bird of pray, but when I saw the head up close, I recognized this villain from its Antarctic cousins.
These trips are billed as going into the land of the polar bear, so that is what a lot of people come for. Polar bears are marine mammals that are dependent on ice, because they hunt seals that are hauled out on the ice. We’ll look at the ice charts and find areas that have a good density of ice and then there will be several people on lookout duty. There is a friendly competition going on between guest, staff and officers to see who spots the most wildlife.
There are at least 4 kinds of polar bears that we could see. The first one is called the pixel bear, which means that it is so far away that it is only 1 pixel in size.
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| A pixel bear far in the distance. |
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| Don't look too hard for a bear in this one, it's only a landscape with bird |
I think we do count them, but of we are really on the look out for, is the “Quality Bear” - the bear that is nearby enough that we can see it without binoculars. When we see one, we will observe its behavior to see what it is doing and then slowly we will try to get closer without disturbing it. If we change its behavior, it means that we have failed and have disturbed it, which would be bad for the bear if it had to spend precious calories in trying to avoid us, but also for us, because it could make the bear shy away from boats in the future. Not only are our navigators extremely skilled in the slow and precise maneuvering, the guests are told to be very quiet when they go outside, not to slam doors and only speak in whispers. The more bears we see the harder it seems for the guests to remember these rules.
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| Quality bear. |
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| It has noticed us, but then went on its way. |
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| Very much not interested in our presence. |
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| Reflections are always great. Two bears for the price of one. |
The third kind of bear is the “Bear on a Kill”, where ideally we see it getting its prey. You might see a bear walking around, with its head held up high and shaking from left to right, because a bear is “all nose” and can smell a seal from a very long distance away and by moving their head from left to right they cover a lot more area. Only some 10 percent of attempts are successful, but once it has killed, it will go for the blubber of the animal, because that provides the most energy. Sometimes they will eat till they’re full and bury the remainder (so that other bears don’t smell it so easily) to finish eating after a nap. I think the most prized bear however is the “Bear with Cubs” which of course makes for the cutest pictures.
Our ship has an so called “open bridge policy” which means that at any moment the guests are welcome on the bridge. This has been a very good decision, because it is the best lookout position of the ship, with the added bonus of staying warm and protected and getting all the information from the naturalists. The captain himself also has a wealth of information on the animals and their behavior. He also has a wealth of sarcasm built up over the years from receiving all these guests, some of whom seem to have forgotten to pack their brains while they were packing for this trip. Today we had a good laugh at someone who asked which of the 2 hikes was going to be longer, the long one or the medium one. Sigh.
There are a lot of interesting things to learn about polar bears. The females are smaller than the males (of course?), but also the female cubs are already smaller than their brothers. They are extremely good swimmers and have been recorded to swim hundreds of miles. When the ice is gone, they will spend time on land and not eat for months and if the mothers are pregnant and hole up, they will not eat for even longer. They might be forced to swim for hundreds of miles if they dug a den on a piece of ice that drifted far away when they finally emerge. They hardly do any peeing during den period, but absorb most of it back into their body to get the remaining nutrients. They have something akin to webbed tissue in their enormous paws to help with swimming. And I could go on and on, if only a had listened to the wealth of information the naturalists provide to our guests. As it is, I am busy enough with work and am already happy that I was able to finish this post.
:-)
And some more pictures, just because it was so hard to choose.
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| Bear on a kill. |
I just found these 2 pictures on my SD card.
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| You can still recognize that it was a seal. |
