Day Three (6-11-12)

Hey Everybody!

Much like yesterday we travelled through the night - since we are still in an area that the Gulf stream reaches, this is considered the "tropical" part of the arctic. After today's activities we will turn east and north toward 80* north (the high arctic). It is nearly midnight as I write. The sun is out, it's very cloudy but there is blue sky, and it has snowed on and off throughout the day but never for long.

Thus far the weather has been quite mild. Several times I've been able to stand on deck without a jacket. We are required to wear our parkas and loaner boots for excursions and I think that's been necessary for the most part.

There is almost no noise here. It's beautiful & peaceful but often seems so lifeless except for the birds, which provide just about the only noise we hear besides wind and water. Before breakfast this morning there was a young humpback whale. And occasionally we see seals (ringed, harbor, bearded). But one of today's zodiac excursions convinced us that there is a lot of activity way up north. I'll get to that in a minute.

This is a picture of the beach just after we got off the zodiacs...the orange tower is a lookout post the guides use. They were constantly checking for signs of bears and they always carry rifles.

The first zodiac trip today was to "Blubber Town" - officially known as Smeerenburg. The Dutch established the first whaling station here in the 1700s. There used to be a huge whale population here, but the whalers wiped it out after about 40yrs of hunting. And there are very few whales here to this day. There are still areas where you can see the blubber cookeries. We also found some old bones and a very old mast.


An old blubber cookery:

Smeerenburg is also the sight of the 1896/1897 attempts to launch hydrogen-filled balloons to the North Pole.

As soon as we exited the boats (yep, another wet landing) there was a polar bear buzz in the air. The guides had found some tracks. Of course they didn't know how new or old they might be and they saw no bear. There was a young (maybe 3 mo) ringed seal dangerously close to shore - perfect polar bear snack! So, it did restrict our activities a bit in terms of distance covered. But we never saw a bear & I never saw the tracks.

A lot of trash washes ashore here due to the currents. The arctic, which is without trees, has a large number of trees on shore. The trees come fom Russia/Siberia! One of the tasks polar cruise operators have adopted during their season is to collect trash and bring it back to Longyearbyen for examination and cataloging. We picked up lots of plastic and I took on the challenge of getting the net. Luckily, a nice man helped me carry it.

This was the first chance for snowshoeing, but I opted out to take pictures. I will probably do it tomorrow. Here's a pic of the group that did snap them on.

After Smeerenburg we returned to the ship for a couple hours or so, then ventured back out for a zodiac cruise in search of polar bears in the Holmiabukta area (Butka means bay). While we did not see any...we had fun searching. Here are some of the interesting signs of life:

Polar bear tracks

A polar bear sliding down a mountain to conserve energy.

Reindeer tracks

The glaciers continue to pop up before us regularly.

This hut is pretty cool....used to be for trappers, but is now presrved/cared for by the Svalbard government. They send 1-2 people out for two month stretches to monitor things. How cool would that be?! Of course they must be careful of bears.

That's all for now....more soon!