Page 53 - 2003 SVALBARD, NORWAY

area. They also believed that he could easily get down whenever

he chose to do so. Guess he was just interested in geology.

With this disappointment, our Filipino buffet supper was moved
forward again, but first we got to see some footage from the ROV

which had gone undersea in front of the ice cap face we had
visited yesterday. It was fascinating viewing the small invertebrate
creatures floating in the water. The undersea photographer even

found a couple of sea spiders for us. He told us about “marine
snow” which is the white material floating in suspension in the

waters--no doubt made up of all kinds of detritus including waste
materials from the animals, bodies of creatures both large and

small in states of decay, accretions of minerals, etc. We would
certainly like to see more from ROV filming later in the cruise.

Walrus Facts
We had another talk from Tom Smith on walruses but we had
already heard much of what he had to say at another time. He

spoke about walrus breeding, food consumption including clams
and seals, molting, long period of lactation (18 months), their

ability to fend off and even kill polar bears. They can weigh about
3500 lbs. & consume about 70m lbs. of food daily. Their suction

strength is truly phenomenal and they are excellent divers, able to
go down 150 meters and stay down 45 minutes.

The Filipino buffet was delicious and we enjoyed it immensely and
totally. However, we are still left today with two questions with no

answer even after having looked for some naturalists after dinner:
1) where do polar bears get their fresh water and how often must

they have it? 2) How often do they need to sleep?

The captain told us he was going to head into an area the ship had
not ever gone before, trying to find more landing places in the