After a frustrating stutter-start of two years (thank you, Covid), a group of twelve like-minded souls set off at last on a small ship in the far North. We shared the common goal of searching for polar bears living in their own authentic world on and near the tiny archipelago of Svalbard . (For more about that magical place, see my previous blog.) For eleven days, we made our way from the port town of Longyearbyen up the western coast, poking into fjords, all the way to the north coast and beyond. It is amazing how such a tiny dot on the map could be so stunning. How easy it would be to get lost in its immensity.

Our three exceptional leaders were naturalist/host Chris Morgan (of BearTrek and The Wild podcast fame), Rinie van Meurs (legendary polar bear spotter, according to everyone who knows the Dutchman) and Rickard Berg (amazing outdoorsman, fabulous storyteller and gentle giant of a Swede). Our vessel, the Polarfront, a 55-meter ice-class former polar weather station, was beautifully re-purposed for Arctic expeditioning and manned by a capable and fun French crew of 12 (home port: Marseilles).

We knew that seeing polar bears is never a given, so imagine the reverberations of joy when Rinie announced on the first day that he saw a bear on a hillside 5.7 nautical miles away. Even he admitted that this had to be some sort of record! We moved closer, and the curious young female walked off the mountainside to the ice and a long way over to our ship.

I won’t soon forget the sound of the ice surface crunching under her paws, or the sound of her breathing, or the sight of her standing on her hind legs to sniff the air, and breaking the ice to go for a swim beside the ship, then hauling out and shaking off the water. Magnificent.

How could our quest get any better than that we agreed, once she had enough and wandered away. But it did. Further north, we saw nine more bears. Some were on the ice, looking for seals (their favorite food). We encountered a mostly-eaten whale carcass, probably beluga, where a solitary bear had to share the lunchroom only with the gulls. Another swam between some small islands, hoovering up goose eggs.

One day, we entered a fjord and Rinie soon spotted, not one, but three bears! For four hours, we were mesmerized by a mother bear and her two yearling cubs as they wandered miles around the edge of the fjord, climbing a very steep hillside along the way. At one point, she got above the cubs, and glissaded down to a small snowfield to them. At first, they were backdropped by the giant cliffs, partly still snow covered. Then they wandered across the ice and the backdrop became an enormous glacier.

We could make out the dots of three separate seals resting on the ice ahead of the little group. Then, the cubs got the word: hunker down, mama’s going hunting. She eased closer, stalking the first resting seal ever so slowly, then missed out. She headed toward the next. Missed out again. The third? She missed again! Such is the polar bear’s world. Rinie said they get maybe one in ten seals. But there was a fourth seal we had not seen. Success! Between her and the cubs, it took only a few minutes for the seal to become a much-appreciated dining memory.

When protection of these beautiful, powerful, keystone mammals was instituted in 1973, there were perhaps only 300 polar bears left in the Svalbard region. Now there are approximately 3,000. What an incredible opportunity, to see these amazing animals in their Arctic home. The bears we saw were healthy-looking, sleek, beautiful. But the widespread concern about their diminishing habitat is all too real. According to a sign at the Svalbard museum, “The greatest temperature increase in the world has been registered in Svalbard, 5.6 degrees centigrade average over the last 30 years.” The changes happening in the Arctic (and elsewhere) affect weather systems throughout the world due to the effects upon the ocean currents, which are connected and swirl worldwide.

It was truly joyful to see polar bears on their own, undisturbed terms. With our smiles, though, came wistful emotions. All of us know that what is happening to the climate has extensive repercussions. From wherever you are reading this to the polar bears we saw (and those we missed!), every wild creature out there is relying on humans to alter what is happening. On their behalf, please do all you possibly can to learn about the situation and take measures that might help alter their futures, and ours.