It’s after 10 PM in the land of the midnight sun, and I’m on the stern of a small Quark Expeditions cruise ship, watching a polar bear stalk a seal in slow motion. The bear skulks between floating ice pans. A blubbery spotted seal lifts its nose to sniff the air every few minutes, then flops back down. We cruise passengers look back and forth with our binoculars, fingers going numb in the 32-degree night.
Finally, when the bear has almost reached its prey, the seal cries out, “See ya, sucker!” then slips into the water. The frustrated bear pulls itself up onto a sheet of floating ice and performs a series of calisthenics, including downward-facing bear and lying on its back kicking its four feet in the air. Here are just a few factoids about these fascinating bears.
In remote Svalbard, halfway between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole, a mysterious bunker is carved into Plateau Mountain. If you drive between the town of Longyearbyen and the Svalbard airport, you can see the entrance poking out of the snow and permafrost. But that’s as close as you’ll get. This high-security facility is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It houses backup seeds from around the world to ensure crop biodiversity.
It’s been called the “doomsday vault” because the seeds are waiting patiently to repopulate fields in case of war, drought, plagues of locusts, or other manmade or natural disasters. The vault holds more than 1 million samples from almost every country.
Photo by Riccardo Gangale, via Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Why Svalbard?
More than 1,700 gene banks worldwide store food crop seeds for safekeeping. But not only are they vulnerable to major catastrophes, but also to simple problems like poor management and lack of funding. A freezer breaks? There goes your country’s biodiversity backup. That’s why a well-run global seed vault is so valuable.
Svalbard is located far from the world’s other gene banks. In fact, it’s the farthest north you can fly on a scheduled flight, making it remote but still accessible. Seed shipments only have to travel 10 minutes from the Svalbard airport. The area is above sea level, geologically stable, and has low humidity. Nowhere is immune from global warming, but Svalbard is one of the world’s coldest places. The vault is further cooled down to -18 degrees Celsius (-0.4 degrees Fahrenheit). But even if the cooling system were to fail, permafrost would keep the seeds viable for a long time.
Model of the seed vault in the Svalbard Museum. / Photo by Teresa Bergen
How are seeds stored?
The Nordic Genetic Resources Centre runs the seed vault. Countries around the world can store seeds in the vault for free. Construction started in 2006, and the first seeds arrived in 2008.
Workers receive sealed boxes of seeds in a portal room. From there, they wheel them down a high-tech, watertight tunnel and deposit the seeds in one of three chambers. This should be enough storage for decades to come. But there’s plenty of room in the mountain to carve out more chambers if needed. The chambers house long shelves with colorful boxes made of plastic, wood, or cardboard.
Each depositing gene bank maintains ownership of its seeds. Only that gene bank can request to have its seeds returned. In 2015, Syria made the first withdrawal. The International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas, originally located in the hard-hit city of Aleppo, requested that the Svalbard vault return 130 of its 325 boxes of deposited seeds to replace those damaged by war.
Those Syrian seeds were safely stored in Svalbard, alongside cowpea from Sudan, pearl millet from Zambia, heirloom seeds from the United States, and barley from the remote Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan, among about a million others.
Can you visit?
While tourists aren’t allowed inside this high-security facility (for obvious reasons), several tours take visitors to see the entrance. If you find yourself in remote Longyearbyen, consider booking a guided Seed to Summit hike, where you’ll learn all about the town’s coal mining history and pass the vault entrance. Or see the area by car on the two-hour Longyearbyen in a Nutshell tour.
Looking for a super secluded holiday with your sweetheart, besties, or favorite family members? Off the Map Travel offers a dream package for those who want to get really far away from civilization. Spend two nights at a floating safari camp at Sweden’s Lake Degerselet, just south of the Arctic Circle, then transfer by canoe for a final night at the land-based Aurora Safari Camp.
Despite the remote location, you won’t be roughing it at the floating safari camp. You’ll have two glamping tents, a double room, a toilet, and a shower. The kitchen has a two-burner stove, refrigerator, and a dining area. Act fast, or book for next year. The floating camp operates June through September and can sleep up to six people. Here are some of the adventures you can go on while you’re there.
While cruising the polar regions with Quark Expeditions, passengers rely on Ultramarine’s well-stocked shop for all the stuff they should have brought from home. I bought several things myself during a recent Arctic cruise, despite doing some of my best pre-trip preparation. This Arctic packing list comes from my experience and the greater wisdom of Anna Mitieva, store manager aboard Ultramarine. She shared with me the top things people forget to pack and wind up buying on the ship.
Mitieva, a Ukrainian refugee, has run the shop since Quark hired her in early 2022. “I arrived destroyed, shocked, wrecked, exhausted. So they adopted me.” While Mitieva already spoke English, she had to learn lots of new vocab, like musk ox, narwhal, and carabiner. Quark took care of Mitieva, and now Mitieva cares for the shop and the needs of the passengers.
Anna Mitieva runs Ultramarine’s excellent shop. / Photo by Teresa Bergen
Would you like to live where reindeer roam the streets, you have an entire month of slow-motion sunset, and it’s illegal to die? Then come on up to Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost city. Located at 78.2232-degree latitude, the biggest settlement in the Norwegian Arctic’s Svalbard archipelago is just 650 miles from the North Pole.
I gleaned this info while visiting the area with Quark Expeditions. Quark guide Gerardo “Gordo” Stern shared many of these fun facts with passengers on our Arctic cruise. Stern, originally from Buenos Aires, spent a year in the unusual town of Longyearbyen. Here’s how the city’s approximately 2,200 inhabitants live.
I’d never thought much about walruses until I was quietly approaching one by sea kayak. My guide, Jane Whitney, was wary of the creatures. Walruses weigh more than a ton and could have easily tipped us into the icy Arctic waters. Over the course of a week touring the Norwegian Arctic with Quark Expeditions, I had several walrus encounters and learned some fascinating facts about these animals.
First, walruses come in two types: Atlantic and Pacific. The ones I saw were Atlantic walruses, which live in the northern waters of Greenland, Canada, Norway, and Russia. Pacific walruses are found between Alaska and Russia.
I try to turn my kayak in time but wind up sideswiping yet another iceberg. Kayaking in the Arctic is a steering challenge, what with chunks of ice everywhere. Navigating ice is part of the adventure while sea kayaking on a Quark Expeditions cruise to Svalbard aboard the ship Ultramarine. And does it ever pay off! Being surrounded by vast mountain ranges, paddling close to walruses, and listening to sparkling chunks of ice crack as they melt are unforgettable experiences.
“You’ll remember those sounds your whole life,” Jane Whitney, our kayak expedition leader, assured me.
I was extremely lucky to get a spot in the sea kayaking group, as only 10 were available. Our group got to paddle seven times during the cruise. Everybody else spent their off-ship time on land or taking Zodiac safaris. There was also a scaled-down paddle program, where people went out once or twice on sit-atop, inflatable kayaks.
Dodging ice. / Photo by Teresa Bergen
Where is Svalbard?
This Norwegian archipelago lies between Norway and the North Pole. You get there by flying into Longyearbyen, the world’s northernmost settlement of more than a thousand people. Longyearbyen is on Spitsbergen, the archipelago’s biggest island. Tourism isn’t new to Svalbard — American John Munro Longyear visited on a cruise back in 1901, then returned to extract coal from the impressive seams — but it’s become more accessible in the last couple of decades.
Now, Longyearbyen is the jumping-off point for trips offered by Quark and other cruise lines. After my 10-day excursion with Quark left from Longyearbyen, we saw few signs of human life except for occasional glimpses of other boats. Instead, we experienced vast ranges of snowy mountains, icebergs, floating sheets of ice, 24 hours of sunlight, and quiet broken only by cries of seabirds.
The mighty Ultramarine. / Photo by Teresa Bergen
Whales in the Arctic
At almost 1 a.m. on our second night, an announcement came over the loudspeaker: a blue whale had been sighted near the boat. I stumbled out of bed, pulled on my Quark-issued yellow polar parka, slipped on some shoes, grabbed my key card, and climbed two flights of stairs to deck five.
There, I joined a handful of fellow passengers who had answered the call. Some were smart enough to put on wooly hats or grab their sunglasses. The sun on the water is ferocious in the middle of the night in Svalbard, at the top of the world. Most people threw on their yellow jackets or white robes. Their lower halves were mostly pajama bottoms or bare legs.
Scanning for wildlife on Ultramarine. / Photo by Teresa Bergen
The captain stopped our ship, and everything stood still. The blue whale had dived. It could take 30 minutes for the creature to reappear. In the meantime, the much smaller minke whale made an appearance, part of its back flashing in and out of the water. I held a hand in front of my face this way and that, trying to shield my eyes. Would I get frostbite and/or go blind from looking at the midnight sun before this whale resurfaced?
I almost gave up. But then part of the blue whale’s long back broke the surface. When it spouted, we heard a loud snuffling noise, like it was sighing out water. We see more back and more spouting as it dives and resurfaces. The dives were shallow — it must’ve been feeding close to the surface — so we never saw the tail. Our fingers were freezing, but we couldn’t stop watching. Every time I thought about going back to bed, that long, dark gray back popped up, and the spout sighed and snuffled. I didn’t stop watching until the ship started moving again, and we left the blue whale behind.
Penguins and other Arctic wildlife
In Svalbard, you have to put in the time to spot animals. Many passengers on my cruise had previously been to Antarctica, where apparently penguins are everywhere, and you don’t even need binoculars to see them.
“This is more like being on a safari,” fellow passenger Carol Lafrenaye told me. Quark had trained spotters stationed around the ship with binoculars 24/7. And they weren’t shy about waking us up for sightings, as we learned several times.
We had some excellent walrus sightings from our kayaks. Whitney has led tours all over the Arctic, among other places. She worries more about walruses than polar bears when kayaking.
“They won’t try to eat you,” she said of walruses, but they’re clumsy and curious. A 2,000-pound animal does not mix well with a tippy sea kayak. We were careful to keep our distance as we paddled by walruses, both when they were onshore and floating on sea ice.
Neither the walrus nor the reindeer were fazed by our presence. Reindeer kept grazing as our group paddled or hiked by them. Arctic foxes were warier and took off zigzagging up the mountains.
A local reindeer grazes in the middle of Longyearbyen. / Photo by Teresa Bergen
Everybody wanted to see polar bears — to the point that several times when we saw seals, a fellow paddler wished aloud that a polar bear would show up to eat them. On the very last night of the cruise, we had an incredible opportunity to see a polar bear swim right by the boat, then hunt two seals that were floating on sheets of sea ice. Spoiler alert: the seals both got away. After its failed attempts, the bear dragged itself out onto an ice floe and proceeded to do a series of calisthenics. This included dragging its chest against the ice with its butt in the air and rolling on its back while waving its legs around. Truly amazing.
Walrus viewing by kayak. / Photo by Teresa Bergen
Land excursions
Time on terra firma included hikes or perimeter landings. This meant that we landed by Zodiac, then stayed within the perimeter formed by our armed polar bear guards. Yes, a disturbing fact about Svalbard is the requirement to carry firearms. Expedition guides who revere wildlife must be prepared to kill a polar bear to save a guest.
Photo by Teresa Bergen
While sea kayaking was the best part of my trip, our best bird viewing was from land or on Zodiacs. At one stop, we climbed a snowy, icy hill to see a breeding colony of little auks, darling black and white birds. We sat and watched them swirl overhead. And, of course, everybody wanted to see adorable puffins. At Krossfjorden, our Zodiac drivers took us to the base of the cliffs. There, we were close enough to see the puffins’ red-orange beaks and feet.
In between off-boat expeditions and while in transit, we spent time on the deck looking through binoculars or in the auditorium listening to the resident geologist, ornithologist, historian, and marine biologist give lively lectures on the world of Svalbard.
Hanging out with Krossfjorden Glacier. / Photo courtesy of Teresa Bergen
Catching the Arctic bug
Not everybody appreciates the Arctic, Whitney tells me. She’s had people compare the austere rocks and ice to a gravel dump. “They didn’t see the light and they didn’t see the ice,” she said. “Other people are blown away by it. It depends how you see things. I think you either catch the Arctic bug or you don’t.”
Judging from my hundreds of photos celebrating a newfound appreciation for ice, I think the Arctic bug has bitten me.
Ice. It’s all over the place in the Arctic. / Photo by Teresa Bergen
Explore.org on Wednesday tweeted a quiz to viewers, asking them to identify the species of falcon that photobombed one of its Arctic live-cam feeds.
Explore.org on Wednesday tweeted a quiz to viewers, asking them to identify the species of falcon that photobombed one of its Arctic live-cam feeds.
“The largest falcon in the world, a rare winter visitor: can you guess the name of this bird sighted on our live cam?” Explore asked.
It didn’t take long for someone to identify the gorgeous raptor as a gyrfalcon, or ghostly gyrfalcon, which is seen curiously examining the camera housing.
The largest falcon in the world, a rare winter visitor: can you guess the name of this bird sighted on our live cam? pic.twitter.com/6aYdWj4nmY
Gyrfalcons are the world’s largest falcons, with wingspans of 4 feet. The rarely seen birds of prey nest in remote stretches of Canada and Alaska, where human presence is nil or minimum.
In the winter, they’re sometimes spotted in open regions of the northern U.S.
The Cornell Lab or Ornithology’s All About Birds website provides this overview:
“The largest falcon in the world, the ghostly Gyrfalcon is a fierce predator in the High Arctic, where it chases down ptarmigans in flight or plummets from the sky at breathtaking speeds to strike prey to the ground.”
Besides ptarmigan, gyrfalcons (pronounced JER-falcons) will hunt sage grouse, terns, pheasants, jaegers, and other bird species. They also prey on small mammals such as hares.
Female gyrfalcons are larger than males, weighing an average of 4 pounds.
States All About Birds: “During the breeding season, a family of Gyrfalcons needs an estimated 2–3 pounds of food per day. That’s about 2-3 ptarmigans per day, which adds up to about 150-200 ptarmigan consumed between courtship and fledging.”
