All in all, we saw 9 individual Polar Bears. Of these, one (our first) was rather distant (so much so that even through the telescope, many people were less than convinced by me that this was actually a Polar Bear stalking a couple of seals on the ice edge, rather than yellow snow...) and another was watched again at some distance swimming across the far side of a fjord.
But our time spent with the other seven was utterly, spectacularly memorable. Spectacular being the word of the trip, obviously.
One young female was watched for upwards of 5 hours as she ambled along the coast, swimming out to some low rocky islands to 'graze' on the eider colony there. She enabled amazingly close approach, and really didn't seem bothered by her admirers. Slightly more of a bother to her were the pair of Great Skuas who were very forceful in pushing her off 'their' island, frequently making contact.
Later the same day we came across a mother with two cubs, making their way across an incredibly scenic sheet of sea ice, backed by glaciers and snowy mountains. One of her cubs was having a hard job of keeping up, having managed to get itself onto softer ice and he fell in a couple of times. Meanwhile, a second large adult was rapidly moving towards the family from further down the ice... a VERY exciting encounter, as the mother clearly wanted to put as much space as possible between her family and this interloping adult, who equally obviously wanted to catch them up! And in the middle of it all, the one floundering cub who just couldn't keep up... Sitting in the zodiacs, a good few hundred metres away from the action, we could hear his cries coming across the ice. In the end, he managed to get back to firmer ice, the mother came back to get him, and the family made its way determinedly off towards the mountains, leaving the lone adult mooching about on the ice edge, looking for a different afternoon snack.
Our last two, a big adult male and a second, smaller individual were up on the pack ice, at almost 81 degrees north. Big white beasts in an expanse of white, snow flurries swirling around, Harp Seals porpoising through the water and groups of Little Auks and Brunnich's Guillemots flying past. Arctic magic!
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