At 0730 the call came from our expedition leader, Lisa Kelley announce a beautiful day at 39 degrees with spectacular light on the tidewater glacier at the head of Croker Bay on Devon Island. Not a creature stirred until moments later she announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a polar bear on shore.” Moments later she announced, “Not only a polar bear but a muskox,” our first for this expedition. You could hear the doors opening and the pitter-patter of feet on the deck. Spectacular light on the eroded cliffs with a sow and her cub sleeping in the foreground and a muskox grazing on patches of vegetation was a perfect way to start this day. The polar bear count at this moment is now at 39 this EPIC expedition witnessing the gamut of behavior. While most of the bears are out on sea ice, the ones that stay on land are in a standing hibernation waiting for the sea ice to form in the next few weeks. According the scat and tracks yesterday, a sow and cub were eating mainly vegetation and scavenging birds waiting for the seal protein in the winter. This is possibly a strategy for experienced sows to increase their cubs’ survival by avoiding the big boars on the ice floes.
Delayed meals due to wildlife priorities are a frequent occurrence on this type of exploratory expedition and today was no exception. We embarked from the ship on Zodiacs near the face of a large sparkling tidewater glacier with sizeable icebergs possibly floated in from Greenland. For the remainder of the morning, we perused a plethora of glacial ice ranging from tiny brash ice and growlers to gigantic bergy bits and a few “ship-sized” icebergs. Along the medial moraine a sleeping polar bear was spotted and even with a trained eye it was almost imperceptible since Ursus maritimus is the master at disguise. The bear slept contently as we explored the front of the glaciers and occasionally a seal poked its head up to spy on all the bright colored coats pointing big lenses from our Zodiacs.
Transiting to our afternoon destination of Dundas Harbour, we spotted a herd of about a dozen muskox spread out on an alluvial plain on Devon Island. As we slowly approached the beach, a polar bear taking a nap revealed itself next to a muskox kill. We were not sure if the carcass was scavenged or taken by the bear but needless to say this was another plump happy bear sleeping off the warm summer days. Continuing to Dundas Harbour on this astonishing wildlife and landscape day, all the acute eyes on the bridge also spotted bear-dots (boulders), wal-rocks (rocks), and musk-barrels (oil drums).
The backdrop to our afternoon walks in scenic Dundas Harbour was a receding piedmont glacier descending from Devon Island icecap that is the second largest in North America only to Greenland. Highlights included a dense concentration of ancient Thule homes surround by a number of mammal bones that made up their housing structures as well as their high protein diet a millennia ago and also a pair of white gyre falcons on a bird kill. As of press time, our total polar bear sightings stand at 46 and counting…absolutely EPIC!
