I don’t usually dedicate posts but this is in memory of DB. There are no words; there never will be.
For previous installments of my adventures in Svalbard, click here.
First, some random observations and tit-bits from Svalbard:
You don’t run the sled dogs if it’s warmer than 14 degrees.
There are no endemic plants.
Moss can store water up to ten times its weight.
The biggest recorded iceberg was 158 miles long.
Arctic terns can fly 150 kilometres from their nest to find food. They have been known to dive 150 metres deep.
A walrus can eat 80kgs of mussels and they easily separate the mussels from their shells.
Bridge Tour: On a day it’s too foggy to leave the ship at all, we are invited to visit the ship’s bridge. There’s a crew-member constantly on lookout. Today it’s George who stands by the huge windows scanning the water. Obviously he’s not just looking for polar bears as we are in open ocean when we are invited to visit. Just then there wasn’t anything for the lookout to see. I’m sure we wouldn’t have been allowed to be there if the bridge crew had to negotiate the ship’s way around icebergs.
Aboard: There are 101 staff to our 122 passengers which means we are extremely well-looked after on the MV Greg Mortimer. A great many of the dining and house-keeping staff are from the Philippines. The steward who looks after the few cabins on my deck (where it’s cheapest, having only a porthole not a balcony) is called Leyland. He’s from Sri Lanka.
For breakfast and lunch, we serve ourselves from massive buffets with more dishes than I can count. The breakfast chef does a cracker of a cooked-to-order omelette. Each lunch has a featured dish. My favourite is the nachos, and I’d be more comfortable if the sushi and sashimi were served during the first day or two that we were at sea. There’s no replenishing of supplies out here at more than seventy degrees North.
For dinner it’s a la carte in both the main dining room and the more intimate restaurant, the Tuscan Grill, that you need to reserve a table for. And, really, the Tuscan Grill is fine, but its offerings are not very different to those on the main restaurant menu (nor are they all grilled). I am fairly certain that the second restaurant is maintained because they get extra stars for having two. You know, like if a hotel has an elevator, it gets a higher star rating than if it doesn’t.
Each day we can attend lectures. Those I attend are all very good. We learn about that ‘Glacial Budgets’ are like our bank accounts. When there’s more going out of a glacier, than going in, it decreases. There is, of course, myriad references to climate change. Not one of the staff I heard or spoke with doubted climate change for a moment. Nor did the Svalbardians (if that’s what they’re called). Soon that most populous vehicle in Svalbard, the snow mobile, will be obsolete.
We learn that Svalbard is at a junction of two weather patterns. It’s the finishing line for the Atlantic Jetstream and the Siberian one. When the two meet, we are told by our onboard experts, it can produce some wonderful fog. Unfortunately fog also prevent us from expeditioning.
In another lecture, we learn that a polar bear is classified a marine mammal although it’s also the largest land carnivore. Its fur is hollow for insulation and oily to repel water. Bears are strong swimmers – that we saw ourselves (see Part Two) – and they can run at some speed: up to 40 kilometres per hour.
The ship is new and of an innovative design. It’s snubby nose is designed to deal better with ice than a traditional bow. It can also quickly and purposefully list to port or starboard. And, somewhat disorientingly, it seems it can ride higher or lower in the water. It’s all to do with moving ballast – water – in and out of different tanks. Listing to one side makes it easier for us to get on the zodiacs. Rising – and I’m guessing here — means a smaller footprint as we sail amongst sea-ice.
Ship (by someone else)
Each expedition we board Zodiacs. The inflatable dinghies look like they should have James Bond aboard rather than a bunch of over-padded tourists. When not in use, the black rubber boats are lined up on the rear of deck five (a-deck-and-a- bit above sea level) like sprinters at a starting line. They are lowered into the water by one of the ship’s two small cranes.
There be walruses! A huge herd of them sprawl across one end of a stony island. Above the herd some of the walrus wave tail fins, others raise a lazy flipper or two, so the air above them seems to shimmer with constant motion. I get my mental estimate hugely wrong at sixty. Expedition Leader Christophe says there are somewhere around two hundred. It smells like he’s right. And that’s from the zodiacs maybe one hundred metres away. Some walruses frolic and roll in the sea, even coming quite close to satisfy their curiosity. We keep having to back away, respecting their need (and probably the law) for personal space. A great many honk, like a baritone of geese. Their tusks can be huge, longer than my arms. One massive bull rolls away from the huddle slowly, lazily, across the sea-smoothed stones and the fine dark sand, as a kid might roll down a hill. He reaches the waterline, continues rolling into the water. There is barely a splash before he swims towards us to see, presumably, if we are a threat to his harem. Could one of those tusks actually puncture a rubber dinghy? (The good pics are by Robert K)
There also be birds.
There are no penguins in the Arctic but there are guillemots which have some striking resemblances to penguins. Guillemots are black and white and look very similar, when upright, to the Adele penguins you can see in Southern Patagonia and the Antarctic. They have pretty much the same diet and nesting habits. Our wonderful guide and expert Daniel— a Tasmanian – shows us how they were all basically the same bird but for their ability to fly (or not). And that ability fits their habitat. Penguins don’t have to fly because there’s enough food they can get by walking or swimming. In the Arctic there’s often not sheet ice to walk on to get food so flight is a necessary ability. So, there’s your Darwinian moment for today.
One morning we sail beside great cliffs full of birds. Guillemots, Arctic terns, Gulls, and kittywakes primarily. Some with chicks. And rowdy! Several hundred thousand avian cries meld together into a cacophony. The air is full of flying things. Think of a humid summer’s night and you’ve left the back porch light on, and it’s swarming with mosquitoes and moths and you’ll get an idea. None took one iota of notice of us in our Zodiac.
Like puffins (of which we only saw a few, it being the end of their season), Arctic terns are not very graceful when flying and certainly not when landing on water. They skip – well more like bounce. Reminding me of when my brother and I used to skim-skip stones along the surface of a dam or lake.
There’s a lot of driftwood on Svalbard’s shores. Way more than makes sense when the islands are too far north to grown anything substantial. Different to Iceland, which did (if I remember correctly) have trees but the Vikings cut them down and burnt them and didn’t plant more. Svalbard’s driftwood must have been mightily appreciated by the sealers who first came here. Like, they’re proper-good logs. And must come from Norway or Russia. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the archipelago didn’t have an indigenous or Inuit people. Nor did the Scandinavian Sami didn’t settle here.
We are taken to sheet ice by the Zodiacs. One of our fellows decides to do some yoga.
The last couple of days aboard, after I receive some terrible news from home, I can’t find the energy to do any excursions. But the last day I find a bubble on the top deck that I can sit in and be warm, and drink wine, and call home, all while watching the Zodiacs zip hither and thither along the face of two glaciers.
And so that’s my trip to Svalbard. Onward to the Baaltic states.