The polar night has begun in Spits­ber­gen some days ago, and it won’t be befo­re the second half of Febru­ary that the sun will be visi­ble again abo­ve the hori­zon. In the dar­kest time, from mid Decem­ber to ear­ly Janu­ary, it will be dark 24/7. Only stars, moon and nor­t­hern lights will cast some bleak light over the snow-cover­ed land­scape when the sky is clear.

A good time to sort pho­tos and take care of the web­site. Kross­fjord has now got the site it deser­ves, being one of Spitsbergen’s big­gest and most beau­tiful fjords. A map makes it easy to navi­ga­te through seve­ral sub-pages that have got pan­ora­ma series and vir­tu­al tours of a num­ber of places in Kross­fjord, of cour­se inclu­ding some back­ground infor­ma­ti­on.

The polar bear in Lon­gye­ar­by­en (see pre­vious posts) is not in Lon­gye­ar­by­en any­mo­re. Today (Thurs­day, 16 Octo­ber) at 12.45 hours, it was seda­ted and then flown out to a remo­te part of Sval­bard. Befo­re the polar bear actual­ly fell asleep, it still wal­ked for about 3 kilo­me­t­res from the shore of Advent­fjord, whe­re it had been lying for a while, to the old nor­t­hern light obser­va­to­ry (at the old run­way) in Advent­da­len. After the usu­al weig­hing, mea­su­ring and mar­king, it was flown nor­thwards.

The Sys­sel­man­nen wants to get it as far away as pos­si­ble, pre­fer­a­b­ly to ano­ther island rather than the main island Spits­ber­gen. The exact place will, howe­ver, depend on the wea­ther during the flight. The initi­al­ly nor­t­her­ly direc­tion may, howe­ver, point to Nord­aus­t­land as a pos­si­ble new home for the bear. If it beco­mes simi­lar­ly faithful to a smal­ler area the­re as he did near Lon­gyear­ben, is some­thing nobo­dy can curr­ent­ly know, pro­ba­b­ly inclu­ding the polar bear its­elf.

A lar­ger num­ber of peo­p­le used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get a glim­pse of the bear in a distance of about 540 met­res. For some, it was the first time to see a polar bear in the wild.

Source: http://svalbardposten.no/index.php?page=vis_nyhet&NyhetID=5128

Yes­ter­day (Wed­nes­day, 15 Octo­ber) a polar bear visi­ted Lon­gye­ar­by­en (see yesterday’s post here). The bear was final­ly dri­ven away by the Sys­sel­man­nen (poli­ce), who fol­lo­wed it seve­ral kilo­me­t­res by heli­c­op­ter to make sure it would return direct­ly.

But it did. Now, the polar bear is some­whe­re on the sea shore of Advent­fjord adja­cent to Advent­da­len, clo­se to Lon­gye­ar­by­en. Tog­e­ther with the Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te, the Sys­sel­man­nen is now pre­pa­ring an attempt to seda­te the polar bear and then fly out out to a remo­te loca­ti­on in the Spits­ber­gen archi­pe­la­go.

The Sys­sel­man­nen asks ever­y­bo­dy to stay away from the­re area until this has been done.

Source: Sys­sel­man­nen

Polar bears were seen in the vici­ni­ty of Lon­gye­ar­by­en seve­ral times during the last cou­ple of weeks, for exam­p­le in Hior­th­hamn, on the north side of Advent­fjord about 3 km from town, in late August, and in near­by Advent­da­len.

Last sun­day (12 Octo­ber) mor­ning, a polar bear was seen just east of Isdam­men, the lake east of Lon­gye­ar­by­en, near the road. But the “high­light” was cer­tain­ly the bear that actual­ly ente­red the lower part of Lon­gye­ar­by­en, near Advent­da­len, today (Wed­nes­day, 15 Octo­ber) in the ear­ly mor­ning. The polar bear came from Advent­fjord and wal­ked past Inge­niør Paul­sen (a shop) and to the row of resi­den­ti­al buil­dings east of Forsk­nings­par­ken (the UNIS/Svalhardmuseum buil­ding), wal­king direct­ly next to the hou­ses in vei 238, part­ly bet­ween them. Then, it went back into Advent­da­len, whe­re it was found by the poli­ce near the first dogyard, only a few 100 met­res from town. The Sys­sel­man­nen (poli­ce) scared the bear away and fol­lo­wed it for a while by heli­c­op­ter to make sure it would not return straigh­ta­way. It went into Mälard­a­len, a val­ley on the oppo­si­te side of Advent­da­len.

It was an unp­lea­sant sur­pri­se for the inha­bi­tants of the hou­ses in vei 238 to see the polar bear tracks whe­re some had been wal­king late­ly in the evening befo­re. The thought of sud­den­ly mee­ting a polar bear on the way home from school, work or the pub is quite unp­lea­sant. At least, most peo­p­le do not lock their doors, so in the worst case most hou­ses offer shel­ter in case it is urgen­tly nee­ded.

The Sys­sel­man­nen asks ever­y­bo­dy to be careful, espe­ci­al­ly as the dark sea­son is now start­ing and a bear may be dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to see befo­re it is actual­ly clo­se.

Quel­le: Sys­sel­man­nen

Seve­ral polar bears have been han­ging out in the Bil­lefjord area, north of Lon­gye­ar­by­en, for quite a while alre­a­dy. The­se have ben seen many times by tou­rists and the 14 per­sons who are working and living in the lar­ge­ly aban­do­ned Rus­si­an sett­le­ment Pyra­mi­den. Seve­ral times during the sum­mer, a bear has been seen insi­de Pyra­mi­den, also direct­ly next to hotel Tuli­pan, whe­re seve­ral peo­p­le live and whe­re guests are lodged.

Now, the polar bear has lite­ral­ly gone a step too far: during the night to Mon­day, it went through a win­dow into the bar to have a look around. The human inha­bi­tants of the hotel were woken up by the noi­se, but pre­fer­red to lea­ve the polar bear alo­ne to its busi­ness. No infor­ma­ti­on has been published about dama­ged that is likely to have hap­pen­ed, other than that the living bear was not inte­res­ted in his pad­ded con­spe­ci­fic fel­low. It is not known if the polar bear show­ed any inte­res­ted in the strong drinks that are stored in the bar.

In any case, it had alre­a­dy left when the Sys­sel­man­nen arri­ved on the sce­ne. Despi­te a 1.5 hour heli­c­op­ter search, the bar bear could not be found.

As repea­ted attempts to sca­re the polar bear away from Pyra­mi­den have not yiel­ded any­thing bey­ond short-term suc­cess, the Sys­sel­man­nen has now deci­ded to tran­qui­li­ze the bear and move him to a remo­te desti­na­ti­on when he comes back.

It is likely the same polar bear that bothe­red a stu­dent camp near Nor­dens­ki­öld­breen oppo­si­te Pyra­mi­den a few weeks ago (when the gre­at pho­to with the bear and the Sval­bard­bu­tik­ken pla­s­tic bag was taken).

Source: Sys­sel­man­nen, Sval­bard­pos­ten

Pro­ba­b­ly, you have to read the head­line twice to belie­ve it: yes, peo­p­le were grun­ting at wal­rus­ses, not the other way around. This remar­kab­le event is said to have hap­pen­ed on July 16 at Tor­ell­ne­set in Hin­lo­pen Strait during a pas­sen­ger landing from MS Expe­di­ti­on.

A guest wro­te a let­ter later to Sys­sel­man­nen and Sval­bard­pos­ten, becau­se 2 “wild­life spe­cia­lists” from the ship dis­tur­bed wal­rus­ses to achie­ve “good” pho­to­graphs. The 2 “spe­cia­lists” are said to have approa­ched wal­rus­ses in shal­low water to distances of about 2 met­res and then to have “bark­ed” and “grun­ted”, assu­ma­b­ly to make the wal­rus­ses move for “bet­ter” pho­to­graphs. Later, other staff jus­ti­fied this beha­vious by say­ing the “spe­cia­lists” knew what they were doing.

Accor­ding to the Sval­bard envi­ron­men­tal act, it is for­bidden to “hunt, catch, harm or kill” ani­mals. The Sys­sel­man­nen will inves­ti­ga­te if the inci­dent is a breach of legal regu­la­ti­ons. In any case, an acti­ve approach of less than 30 met­res distance is not allo­wed accor­ding to AECO-regu­la­ti­ons. AECO is an orga­ni­sa­ti­on of ship-based arc­tic tour ope­ra­tors with, among­st others, the pur­po­se of self-regu­la­ti­on. To achie­ve this, AECO has crea­ted gui­de­lines which are often stric­ter than legal requi­re­ments. The­se gui­de­lines are bin­ding for mem­bers such as the ope­ra­tor of the MS Expe­di­ti­on, who has announ­ced inter­nal inves­ti­ga­ti­ons and con­firm­ed a gene­ral dedi­ca­ti­on to high envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards. AECO is now con­side­ring to dis­cuss the inci­dent on their annu­al mem­ber mee­ting.

In any case, an approach to about 2 met­res distance to wal­rus­ses for tou­ristic pur­po­ses is defi­ni­te­ly not accep­ta­ble. It is also com­ple­te­ly unneces­sa­ry: wal­rus­ses, usual­ly rather lazy and inac­ti­ve on shore, are often lively and curious in the water. It is not too unu­su­al that curious wal­rus­ses them­sel­ves approach peo­p­le who are stan­ding on land near the water­line to clo­se distances – wit­hout any dis­tur­ban­ce of wild­life by bar­king or grun­ting or wha­te­ver.

It is usual­ly easy to see on pho­to­graphs if ani­mals have been dis­tur­bed. Such pho­tos are today hard­ly accept­ed any­mo­re by pro­fes­sio­nal publishers.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten

After a delay of near­ly four months, the Sysselmannen´s new ship Polar­sys­sel could be named and offi­ci­al­ly taken into ser­vice on Satur­day, Sep­tem­ber 20th. The cerem­o­ny was held at the ‘Gam­mel­ka­ia’ in Lon­gye­ar­by­en in the pre­sence of the Nor­we­gi­an Minis­ter of Jus­ti­ce Anders Amund­sen.

The Polar­sys­sel replaces the Nord­sys­sel which in Sep­tem­ber last year, after it´s ele­venth sea­son in ser­vice for the Sys­sel­man­nen, left Spits­ber­gen for the last time. To com­pen­sa­te the new ship´s delay the begin­ning of this year´s sea­son, start­ing in May, was run by a ship of the Ice­lan­dic coast­guard cal­led Tyr.

Unli­ke for­mer ships of the Sys­sel­man­nen, the new Polar­sys­sel was cus­tom-built for ser­vice in Spits­ber­gen and is equip­ped for the spe­cial requi­re­ments of the Sys­sel­man­nen. The vessel´s main tasks will be in the fields of res­cue ope­ra­ti­ons, envi­ron­men­tal moni­to­ring and the pre­ven­ti­on of oil pol­lu­ti­on.

The Polar­sys­sel is equip­ped with a heli­c­op­ter deck, a winch to tow other ves­sels, infrared and optic came­ras to find per­sons or lea­king oil, water can­nons to fight fire, a medi­cal room, two work-boats which can be laun­ched quick­ly and the faci­li­ties for an exter­nal power sup­p­ly to save fuel when the ship lies at the pier in Lon­gye­ar­by­en. With the Polar­sys­sel a ship with the ice class 1B was cho­sen, dif­fe­ring from its ante­ces­sor ‘Nord­sys­sel’ which had the hig­hest ice class 1A Super. The Polar­sys­sel has a crew of 9 per­sons, cabin space for 21 pas­sen­gers and a capa­ci­ty for 35 day-pas­sen­gers.

The hull was built in Tur­key and the ship was then moun­ted and equip­ped in the Havyard shi­py­ard in the Nor­we­gi­an town Leir­vik. She is lea­sed out to the Sys­sel­man­nen by the ship­ping com­pa­ny Remøy Manage­ment. Owner of the ves­sel is the Ice­lan­dic com­pa­ny Faf­nir Off­shore. The con­tract for using the Polar­sys­sel ends in 2020 for the time being. After this, the Sys­sel­man­nen has the opti­on to renew it until 2024. The cos­ts for using the ship will be 329 mil­li­on Nor­we­gi­an Kro­ner in the first ten years. Though, each sea­son the Polar­sys­sel will only stay in Spits­ber­gen for six months, from May to Novem­ber. During win­ter time it will ser­ve on other occa­si­ons for exam­p­le as a sup­p­ly ves­sel for the off­shore oil indus­try.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten, Sys­sel­man­nen