05 Sep 2016

63 Polar Bears in 24 Hours in the Russian Arctic

Wrangel Island has certainly lived up to its reputation for being our award-winning expedition!

Yesterday we saw 63 Polar Bears - with the ice having retreated to the north, the bears have abandoned the floes in favour of the island.  Generally speaking the bears appear to be in good condition.  The encounter with the bear in the photo attached to this Blog was better than exceptional - arguably one of the best ever.  He was relaxed during the encounter which lasted around 8 – 10 mins and we watched on as he stood up, yawned, stretched and modified his gravel bed before lying down again.  He was very indifferent to the zodiacs drifting outside his cave photographing him.  

We have also had a huge stationary high pressure weather system sitting over the Chukchi Sea which is providing us calm, warm and sunny weather conditions almost unheard of for this part of the world at this time of the year.  We have checked the weather forecast for the next three days and it looks like we can expect 15 knots of northerly tomorrow morning, easing to about 5 knots in the afternoon.  This bodes well for our planned visit to nearby Herald Island tomorrow.  We can expect reasonably good sightings of Polar Bears there since it has one of the highest (if not the highest) density of denning Polar Bears of anywhere in the Arctic. It is also one of the most undisturbed and least visited Islands in the Arctic.

It has just gone lunchtime and we have seen 21 bears so far today and if the fog stays away we will make another landing this evening. I am picking our Polar Bear count will only increase.

Photo: Olga Belonovich