Smee­ren­burgfjord – 16th Sep­tem­ber 2016

Fri
16 Sep
2016

It was a pro­mi­sing start to the day, with a very nice sun­ri­se abo­ve the moun­tains and the big gla­cier, with mir­ror images on the water.

It is always worth kee­ping an eye open for wild­life here in the nor­thwest. So we did. And we found it. Not just a bit of it. A who­le sperm wha­le was lying dead on the shore. Impos­si­ble to tell how, whe­re and when it died, but now he was the­re, on this rocky coast. And he was not alo­ne. The­re were two polar bears han­ging around, they had obvious­ly eaten a lot, being lazy and without much moti­va­ti­on for spor­ti­ve move­ments. They were lying around, slow­ly stan­ding up, slow­ly making a few steps, lying down again, then the other one repea­ting the same exer­cise … we spent a good part of the day obser­ving them. At some point, they went back to the dead wha­le, but without much moti­va­ti­on to eat anything real­ly.

Gal­le­ry Smee­ren­burgfjord – 16th Sep­tem­ber 2016

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

Later we left the polar bears to them­sel­ves and made some miles north to Smee­ren­burg to set foot on solid ground. Some wha­ling histo­ry, and … not yet enough regar­ding big ani­mals for today. The­re was a lar­ge group of almost 40 wal­rus­ses on shore. What a day!

By the way, my new book is in print and it can now be orde­red 🙂 it is a pho­to book with the tit­le “Nor­we­gens ark­ti­scher Nor­den (1): Spitz­ber­gen – vom Polar­licht bis zur Mit­ter­nachts­son­ne”, with Ger­man text Click here for fur­ther details!