Our talk this week was Part 3 the pursuit of sea ice in all its forms by Mark B. He travelled from London to Longyearbyen in Svalbard, via Oslo and Tromsø. This takes you about 2000 miles to the north. The arctic circle is about halfway between London and Longyearbyen.
The visit was in July of 2022, and nearly didn’t take place. This was a time when the COVID lockdowns were recently lifted, and the trip was further confounded by a pilots strike at the airline serving the archipelago. However, a couple of days before the due date flying was resumed and the trip went ahead. Unfortunately about half of their luggage missed the flight from Tromsø, including much of their cold weather clothing. A quick trip to the local store filled these shortcomings but at a considerable cost – later reimbursed through insurance, and without argument.
Joining their ship they found that the 79 guests were outnumbered by the crew as not all spaces having been filled following the pandemic. The cruise itinerary changed to keep the ship close to Longyearbyen until the missing luggage arrived
Their ship travelled around the archipelago on a flexible schedule. Several times they had planned outings and even landings using Zodiac style RIBs, but these were cancelled when polar bears were seen on shore. These animals are given an extremely wide berth, both to protect the bears and likewise the people. Likewise the RIBs kept a safe distance from ice cliffs (sudden falls of ice) and icebergs (which can suddenly roll over in the water as melting changes their point of balance).
Mark talked us through the difficulty of shooting from a RIB. He was often using a 400mm lens coupled to a 1.4 x tele-converter (so 560mm equivalent), so difficult to hold steady even on firm ground. On a boat he was affected by wind, waves, motion through the water, and then the motion generated by all the other passengers moving in the boat. Many of the wildlife shots in this blog were obtained in this way, and then severely cropped to better fill the frame with the subject.
With almost 300 slides in Marks’ presentation, picking out the very small number that can be accommodated in this blog has been very difficult. The images reproduced here represent only about 5% of the total, and don’t do justice to the breadth of the images we saw on the night.
The cruise also ventured to the north of the islands, travelling through floating ice until it reached the edge of the north pole pack ice.
Throughout the cruise Mark had noticed that many of the other guests were not reaching the restaurant for meals – due to outbreaks of COVID on board. Mark had a slight cough develop, so was getting a formal check every day – negative on each occasion. On Day 10, his partner also had a cough so joined him for a test. And that was positive. The two of them were isolated in separate cabins, and served all meals in their rooms until their return to Longyearbyen.
The total cruise was over 1200 nautical miles.On return to town they found that the pilots strike was again interfering with flights, so they had a few unexpected days for sightseeing around the small town before the trip back home. Initially disappointed with the loss of their final two days of freedom on the cruise, Mark cheered up when it became apparent that the cruise company had an arrangement in place to provide a full credit refund to any passengers actually contracting COVID during the cruise. A nice benefit, used to pay for the next cruise into icy waters!
We all look forward to the next episode showing us more of Mark’s travels, and thank him for the time and effort involved in preparing this talk for us.
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