Page 75 - 2003 SVALBARD, NORWAY

cool and transparent and almost unbearably delineating. It must

be the Platonic ideal of “light”; the very reason God originally
created eyes!

That miraculous vision of the world in high Arctic midnight sun

made it very hard to pull ourselves away to return to our cabin
with its tiny porthole for something so mundane (even though a
mammalian requirement) as sleep.

HEADING BACK

Breakfast found us between Edgeoya Island and the east coast of

Spitsbergen and we had been sailing all night at a good clip. It is a
long way from where we spent our last bear viewing and midnight

sun watching back to Longyearbyen and so we knew that today
(Sunday, July 13) would be spent at sea without any chances for

landings or sightings; of course there is no more pack ice so we
wouldn’t expect to see any bears. They must make their living on
the ice.

After breakfast, we had a presentation on polar bears by Stefan

Lundgren, a Swede who has spent much of his life in the high
Arctic doing various kinds of jobs including research, guiding,

hunting, and now naturalist duties on Lindblad duties. He did not
claim to be an expert on polar bears, however; he said he was

synthesizing the work of many scientists including Tom Smiths
who is on the ship with us. He spoke to questions of polar bear
reproduction, feeding, denning (pregnant females only),

locomotion (usually walk at 2 mph because that is most efficient
for them and they do not produce excess heat at that stately

speed), hunting, senses (smell, hearing, vision--that is the order of
their dependence on their senses), special adaptations (eye has a