We visited two islands in one day. On Barentsøya we visited a kittiwake colony and on Edgøya the whole landing had to be cancelled because a polar bear was walking along the shore!
July 1
After the thick fog of the night before, we woke up in the morning to a clear blue sky. The wifi connection was really lousy today, and I couldn’t even load the Vesselfinder app to take a screenshot of our route, so here’s a screenshot of the route from the next day.
Kapp Waldburg and Kapp Lee on the map of Svalbard.
Our route passed Kapp Waldburg and Kapp Lee
on the Vessel Finder app.
The daily program for July 1.
Kapp Waldburg
We stopped off the coast of Barentsøya, named after the Dutch sailor Willem Barentsz, who actually never saw the island. Barentsøya is located between Spitsbergen and Edgøya and is mostly covered by glaciers. However, we did not land here to look at a glacier, but to visit a colony of kittiwakes.
On the south coast of Barentsøya, on Kapp Waldburg lives a huge colony of kittiwakes in a ravine. But the first animals we saw when we came ashore were grazing reindeer, who didn’t pay us any attention. We found the gnawed remains of a dead reindeer.
After a short walk, we reached the ravine where thousands of kittiwakes were nesting on nests plastered against the rock wall. It was super crowded with thousands of birds bickering and arguing. There were also birds resting on the ground sunbathing and enjoying a quiet moment, we could just walk by them and they didn’t even look at us.
Our lunch had to wait a little longer because a walrus was floating on an ice floe near the ship.
Kapp Lee
In the afternoon we would have a landing at Kapp Lee, on the northwestern tip of the island of Edgeøya. Kapp Lee is one of the largest remaining historic walrus slaughter sites in Svalbard. Numerous walrus skulls and bones, left by whalers and later Russian trappers, are scattered over the beach. There are also a number of trapperhuts from the early 19th century.
Completely unaware of the slaughtered of their kind that took place here in the past, Kapp Lee is the permanent home of a large group of walruses. We were able to see them from the ship on the beach.
Since we were in one of the last groups to go ashore today, we decided to rest in our cabin for an hour. Less than half an hour later, an announcement was made that there would be no landing that afternoon because of a polar bear sighting. Before the message was over, we had put on our shoes and coats, grabbed the bag with the camera and binoculars, and ran to the deck.
The expedition team returned by zodiac boats at that time. They had gone to the beach to scout the area in preparation for our landing. One of the guides had been walking around some rocks and came face to face with a polar bear about 50 meters away. Luckily, he had turned around and calmy walked the other way, it hadn’t even been necessary to use a flare gun to scare him off.
So no landing that afternoon, but we were able to follow the polar bear for a long time from the ship. At one point we didn’t see him anymore, but Alex managed to spot him again, the bear was taking a break on the snow. As he disappeared behind the rocks, the ship moved slowly so we could still see him in the bay, before he slowly walked up the hill and disappeared from sight.
