Right down in the lower left
hand corner of this picture in the sea is a small
dark area. That is a swimming polar bear. This day
began at 12.50 a.m. with the ringing of the ships
bell. We dragged ourselves out of bed to see that a
distant sleeping bear had woken up and started to
swim towards the boat, at which point the crew
member on watch decided to wake everyone.
I actually took this picture as a landscape shot of
early morning sunshine (we had 24 hour daylight
throughout our trip around Svalbard) rather than of
the bear itself which I only really noticed when
typing this caption. The bear was too far away and
the light too low to get any reasonable pictures of
it in the water.
The bear got as close to the boat as it felt
comfortable with and then did a semi-circle around
us at a constant distance before continuing to the
shore opposite. I went back to bed and was asleep
again within seconds.
Picture
copyright Paul Ward |
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