Lofoten and Bear Island (Bjørnøya) - Spitsbergen

Short note for tho­se of you who have orde­red the DVD set: my ship­ping depart­ment chief will soon have her sum­mer holi­days, so it will take some more time until they will be sent … my apo­lo­gies! You will defi­ni­te­ly get the DVDs in July.

A very good start of the sai­ling sea­son in Spits­ber­gen with SV Anti­gua: high sum­mer wea­ther in Lofo­ten. A very exci­ting wha­le obser­va­ti­on bet­ween Nor­way and Bear Island. Two inte­res­t­ing landings on Bear Island, even with blue ski­es and a full view of Mise­ry­fjel­let. Very enjoya­ble days in the fjords of sou­thwes­tern Spits­ber­gen, inclu­ding ano­ther very rare wild­life obser­va­ti­on: a dead Nar­wha­le, a spe­ci­es that is very rare in the­se waters, being eaten by 3 very hap­py polar bears! I don’t think some­thing like this has been obser­ved in Spits­ber­gen befo­re. Not with a Nar­wha­le.

The wind on the crossings was not exact­ly favoura­ble, but we made nevert­hel­ess quite good speed. The new main engi­ne and pro­pel­ler of SV Anti­gua cer­tain­ly paid off here, as we nee­ded just 1 full day from Nor­way to Bear Island and ano­ther from the­re to Spits­ber­gen and not 2 days for each stretch as in 2011.

And good spi­rits on board. What more could one ask for?

As usu­al, here are the tri­plog and a pho­to coll­ec­tion. A short ver­si­on of the film/slideshow will fol­low, as well as a cou­ple of 360 degree pan­ora­mas taken during the voya­ge. It will, howe­ver, take time pro­ba­b­ly until the end of the year to get the pan­ora­mas finis­hed and online.

Tri­plog (pdf-File, 11,5 MB, Ger­man) Tri­plog updated 22nd June.

And if anyo­ne has wild­life pho­tos that are poten­ti­al­ly inte­res­t­ing for sci­en­tists, then you can send them direct­ly to the Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te. Such pho­tos could by any­thing, but espe­ci­al­ly the back sides of Hump­back wha­le flu­kes, becau­se that allows the iden­ti­fi­ca­ti­on of indi­vi­du­al ani­mals. To have sci­en­ti­fic value, the pho­tos need to have date, time and posi­ti­on (at least appro­xi­ma­te). Direct any pho­tos to Kit Kovacs (Kit@npolar.no.) and enter “MMSD-Anti­gua 2013-1” in the sub­ject line. This allows your pho­tos to be con­nec­ted to the detail­ed report from Anti­gua, which includes, among­st others, accu­ra­te posi­ti­ons.

Pho­to gal­le­ries

• kapp-lin­ne-barents­burg-08_2009

Click on thumb­nail to get the cor­re­spon­ding gal­lery.

Lofo­ten

57 Pho­tos

Bear Island

21 Pho­tos

Spits­ber­gen

43 Pho­tos

Group pho­tos

Group pho­tos 1 (Down­load the lar­ge ver­si­on)

Group pho­tos 2 (Down­load the lar­ge ver­si­on)

Video

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