Day 5: Pack Ice day, Looking for Polar Bears
| Date: | 05.07.2025 |
| Position: | 81°50.7’N / 016°56.2’E |
| Wind: | SW4 |
| Weather: | Overcast |
| Air Temperature: | +2 |
Already at 07:15 there was an announcement that the Chief Officer had spotted a polar bear in the ice! Spotting bears in the ice is extremely challenging and starting the day like this was fantastic. Our experienced Captain navigated the ship skilfully through the ice flows at slow speed. Our M/V Plancius is a very silent ship and as such is perfect for approaching wildlife in a non-disturbing manner.
The bear was lying on an ice flow but soon started to move. To reach other ice floes it sometimes had to swim and climb back onto the ice. But polar bears are excellent swimmers and with their sharp claws can easily find grip on the ice to climb back. It started approaching the ship at times being only a few meters away. After a break for breakfast another announcement was made; a second bear had been spotted! This bear stayed a bit further away from the ship, but it made for a dramatic scene before it disappeared into the fog.
As the ship kept course through the ice despite the sea fog suddenly a silhouette on the ice appeared. It turned out to be a whale carcass and there was a bear on top of it! Our third bear already and it wasn’t even lunch time. The captain carefully navigated the ship closer and with the fog lifting we had an excellent view of this once in a lifetime encounter. The whale was a dead sperm whale which for the polar bears meant a lot of food. Polar bears like blubber and fat and this sperm whale had plenty of that to offer. It seemed hard though to get through the thick skin of the whale so the bear was trying different positions on the whale to get some of the meat and blubber. Whale carcasses sometimes wash ashore on the land, but finding one like this in the pack ice is rare. The risk for the bears is that the carcass eventually will deflate and sink to the bottom. Hopefully the bears will manage to eat their fill before that happens.
While we were enjoying lunch the arrival of another bear was announced. This bear had surely smelled the decaying carcass and made its way in order to have a taste of the whale. The bear that had been on the carcass was now sleeping next to it, but when it saw the other paler coloured bear approaching it retreated to avoid confrontation. The other bear was clearly higher in the hierarchy and once the first bear was far enough away, it returned and started eating.
When it was time to leave the carcass we set sail following the ice edge. No more bears but a whale blow was spotted and this proved to be a rare Bowhead whale. Bowhead whales have been hunted to the brink of extinction and they only recover very slowly. Their numbers are estimated to be only in the hundreds so seeing one from the ship was yet another special moment.
Last but not least, we also managed to cross 82’N something many of us were hoping for.
