Lofoten – Bear Island (a.k.a. Beeren Eylandt or Bjørnøya) – Spitsbergen

The first trip of the arc­tic sum­mer 2015 was an excel­lent start into the sea­son. The wea­ther lar­ge­ly good or very good, wild­life obser­va­tions good and some­ti­mes spec­ta­cu­lar, a suc­cessful, inte­res­t­ing landing on Bear Island, which is always a high­light of this par­ti­cu­lar voya­ge for me, good spi­rits on board – that is all you can hope for and actual­ly more than you should exect.

Here are now pho­tos of this trip, orga­ni­zed into 3 dif­fe­rent pho­to gal­le­ries for a bet­ter over­view, the tri­plog, group pho­to and the short ver­si­on of the slide­show. And addi­tio­nal­ly, the­re is always Rolf’s arc­tic blog, which will be updated con­ti­nuous­ly throug­hout the sea­son. Enjoy ☺

Click here for the tri­plog (pdf, 12,8 MB).

Simi­lar pages will come over the fol­lo­wing months for more arc­tic voy­a­ges: Jan May­en, Spits­ber­gen, Green­land and, final­ly, ear­ly Novem­ber, back to Lofo­ten, with a hint of the polar night and (hop­eful­ly) nor­t­hern lights. So it is worth coming back to this site over the sum­mer.

Gal­lery 1: Lofo­ten to Trom­sø

A start under sail across Ves­t­fjord and then visits to pic­tures­que Lofo­ten vil­la­ges. A rain­bow bridge across Raft­sund direct­ly into famous Troll­fjord, fight­ing Sea eagles, ama­zing Tin­den and final­ly Trom­sø in the best north Nor­we­gi­an ear­ly sum­mer wea­ther.

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

Gal­lery 2: Barents Sea, Bear Island

The Barents Sea, to begin with, was just grey and the wind would not let us use the sails, but we came to Bear Island quite quick­ly. Inspi­te of initi­al doubts becau­se of the rather rough wea­ther, we mana­ged a landing in the sou­thwes­tern part of the island: good impres­si­ons of the rocky cliff coast with some sea­bird colo­nies (Com­mon and Brünich’s guil­l­emots next to each other), views along the gran­dious coast fur­ther south with the rock bridge Kvalk­jef­ten („Wha­le jaw“) and the rock need­le Sylen („The awl“) and inte­res­t­ing details of a karst land­scape inland, some­thing that is quite rare in the Arc­tic. A fog­gy, but calm night at anchor, and next mor­ning, the clouds bro­ke up and we even got sun­ny views of the spec­ta­cu­lar south coast of Bear Island. Very impres­si­ve even though it was far too rough for any landing or Zodiac crui­se.

We we con­tin­ued nor­thwards, the view of a Nor­we­gi­an wha­ling ship in action was some­thing that is actual­ly far too com­mon in the­se waters, but rare­ly seen by peo­p­le like us who shoot with came­ras and not with guns or har­poons. It was a tough expe­ri­ence to wit­ness how a Min­ke wha­le, spik­ed straight through the body by a har­poon, dies with gre­at pain over seve­ral minu­tes. Hump­back wha­les in the most beau­tiful evening sun brought the spi­rits up again, thank­ful­ly.

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

Gal­lery 3: Spits­ber­gen

Wea­ther luck remain­ed with us for the who­le length of time that we still had. From the ice that blo­cked Horn­sund, but brought a lar­ge num­ber of Harp seals, to Bell­sund, whe­re we had our first landings and this ama­zin­gly beau­tiful encoun­ter with a Polar bear fami­ly. The second year cubs were incre­di­bly curious and came straight up to Anti­gua, which was moo­red against the fast ice edge for the night.

The remai­ning time brought Belugas and Wal­rus­ses, tun­dra, Barents­burg, snow and ice in fjords and on land and final­ly a warm fare­well in Lon­gye­ar­by­en.

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

Video

← Back