Svalbard (3) : More Ice Pack sightings..

Posted on by

0

When: August 2026 Weather: Cold arctic summer weather: -5 to 5C

OM1mk2 150-400Zuiko, Leica M11, Leica Q3

Whilst the polar bears remained elusive, we were still getting lots of other very nice sightings……

This rather corpulent but very handsome Bearded Seal was stunning!
Up close and personal…..a smiler!
and then one of the rarer seals in the arctic…..the hooded seal
there is a rather large nose…a bit like the proboscis monkeys in borneo!
hooded seal with bulbous nose
diving
hooded seal
and then some way away was a brown blob…..
it was our 6th ‘seal’ a walrus!
close up…
massive tusks! The usual walrus sighting is of many walruses resting on shore…rarely do we see one alone reasonably near like here
super close up…the whiskers look like sharks fin or microfibres!

And then our guides got quite excited about the next sighting…..

what in the world is this?
The spouting gave it away…a type of whale
we can see the water spout coming from the wide V shaped blow hole
we were told that this was a rare bowhead whale which can live for more than 200 years!
good view of V shaped blow hole with the tip of tthe V pointing forward….we can also see its capacious mouth. It’s called a bowhead whale as the head is well, bow shaped for cracking through ice
And the tail surfaced to wave us goodbye

still no polar bear but we had great other sightings!

Leave a comment