Page 30 - 2003 SVALBARD, NORWAY

to accompany them for the year.” There are still trappers’ cabins

all over the Svalbard but no one is allowed to hunt any animals.
There is one diehard trapper who could not adjust to the urban

world and he stays in the Svalbard in one of these huts. However,
he now makes his living by playing the stock market thanks to his

computer and internet connection. He actually is making more
money than he ever made in his trapper life. Imagine someone
sitting up about 200 miles from the North Pole in the middle of

Arctic Ocean on a tiny scrap of line making his living playing the
stock market. What a brave new world!

During our Zodiac return to the Endeavour we also spotted a

Bearded Seal in the water. His head above the water surface
looked enormous to us but we never got a really close look at his

body since he stayed low in the water. We saw Black Guillemots
(which have a large white triangle on each wing folded on their
backs) as opposed to the Common Guillemots which do not. We

were also informed that all the driftwood and even lumber that
we had seen and would be seeing on our landings came from

Siberia via the big rivers there which emptied into the sea and
then were brought to Svalbard by the oceanic currents. Observing

this phenomenon was one of the factors which led Nansen to his
ideas about the circulation of the waters of the Arctic Ocean and

then led him to believe that if he allowed a ship to become frozen
into the ice at the proper point, it would be swept over the North
Pole by these currents. The theory was interesting but it failed to

bring the Fram to the Pole; however it was the beginning of the
study of oceanographic circulation and currents,