Necessity Bears

Polar bears are everywhere in the Arctic, a psychic ever-present. They are in the water, they are on land, they are in the very air, in valleys, on glaciers, round corners, behind rocks. More than anywhere, though, they are in the minds of every other creature in the region, from Arctic fox to beluga, from reindeer to seal. The animal that thinks about seeing them the most, however, is the homo sapien.

This is true of the passengers on Arctic expedition cruise ships, many of whom have come specifically to see Ursus maritimus in its natural habitat. It’s undoubtedly true of the expedition teams, too, those responsible for spotting these enormous killers in the first place. 

In the nightless summers, sightings can happen at any time, and for all passengers on holiday, very few protest the idea of being woken up to see bears – even if they appear at 3 am. Other times, of course, it is much less arduous. I was once on an expedition cruise when we spotted a mother waiting over a seal’s breathing hole. It lay there for hours while we stood watching. In the distance, her two cubs patiently waited for their sole carer to do her lethal work. In the meantime, the expedition management had to decide what to do: stay here in case a seal appeared or move off to another spot with the clock ticking past three hours of inactivity.

At over 80 degrees north off the coast of Svalbard, it was a pitilessly cold day, though the bears didn’t feel it. Indeed, the mother bear – the world’s largest land predator, eater of all Arctic creatures – got so comfy she fell asleep like a grandmother on a fat Christmas Day. Of all the what-if scenarios offered on the ship, this had not been considered. Finally, after nine soporific hours, the mighty bear stood up, shook her considerable derriere, and marched off to her cubs, dignified, unstoppable, and presumably still hungry.

Polar bears are found across the Arctic region, though they are unequally distributed. Place names hint their range used to be larger – Bear Island, Bjørnøya, south of Spitsbergen, is now far too far south to receive the bruins. In other locations, however, sightings are all but guaranteed. Churchill, Manitoba, often markets itself as the "Polar Bear Capital of the World", while up in Kaktovik, Alaska, there are so many bears close to town that they can be mistaken for sheep on the flight in.

And yet, those destinations also feel a little canned. Spotting bears in Greenland and Svalbard is a much more organic experience, more like a safari trip rather than a visit to a zoo. The effort is greater, but often the rewards are, too.

At least, these are the sorts of things said on ships sailing to those locations. Of the two, Greenland is traditionally the more challenging place to spot polar bears, partly because of the sheer scale of the epic topography but also because of the indigenous peoples living there. For millennia, Greenland people and bears have hunted each other, though the former has always posed more of a threat to the latter.

The effect of having apex predators roaming the land is profound for other wildlife. Everything is cautious, everything potentially on the menu for man and bear alike. This makes all wildlife spotting challenging, especially when compared to the Antarctic regions. 

In the south, with no significant land predator, fauna is abundant and naïve, so relaxed and unsuspecting of humans that it can be challenging to tiptoe through beaches. Not so in the north, where generational trauma has led most mammals and birds to keep their distance from visitors. Passengers who have been to Antarctica before the Arctic may have a polar opposite experience, but few of them are ready for just how unalike these regions are. 

Svalbard, the Norwegian territory in the High Arctic, is substantially different again. Though it still has majestic fjords, high mountains, and moving glaciers, it is a much smaller landmass than Greenland. Climate change has meant it spends much more of the year ice-free, reducing the temptation for bears to migrate. With an estimated population of 3,000 healthy bruins, the archipelago has a comparatively dense population, which is good news for visiting expedition cruise ships and bad news for anything the bears may fancy eating. 

No indigenous people were on Svalbard when European explorers first landed on the islands in the early 1600s. Though not quite the same as Antarctica, the wildlife here is generally less suspicious than in other parts of the Arctic. Altogether, the region has all the elements needed for encounters with polar bears. And yet…

On board the Greg Mortimer this summer, bear expectations were high. An extended 23-day trip starting in Iceland and ending in Svalbard would mean only a few sea days wouldn’t have the potential to see them. Still, no wildlife is officially ever guaranteed, even when there are undeniably high chances – ultimately, the polar bear is a small animal in a vast landscape, with no obligation to appear for tourists. It is at once unafraid and a creature capable of stealth, but this is far from its only contradiction. 

Bears are fierce, cautious, solitary, and omnipotent, but the females are dedicated to family. They are also vulnerable. Those are a lot of human characteristics to project onto another species, especially when we are so ill-equipped to handle them ourselves. 

They completely evaded us in Greenland. The crossing to Svalbard took two days, plenty of time to speculate and pontificate on bears, when and how they’d be spotted, how close we’d get, and whether the photos would be any good. 

On board, there were several lectures on the animals, including just how maddening a species they can be to study. Despite having almost 30 years of polar experience, guide John Kernan didn’t mind admitting to mixing up other animals with the one we’d all come to see. “I’ve had rock bears, snow bears, hare bears… Just last year, I identified a bear, only to find out it was a glaucous gull. Another time, I woke up a whole ship at 3 am for a big group of them on shore. They turned out to be reindeer, so that wasn’t great.”

Everyone had already been briefed about the rigorous nature of safe practice around the animals, how much scouting had to be done, and how dynamic the observations were throughout each landing. Every Zodiac would travel with a buddy with at least one rifle between two boats; on land, armed perimeters or walks led by armed guides would be arranged. There was a militaristic air around some of this – staff had taken multi-day courses in gun handling and polar bear behaviour – but it perhaps doesn’t go without saying that the idea behind it all was not to shoot at all.

Across the Arctic, but especially in Svalbard, bears are heavily protected. If a guide needs to use the last resort of firing a gun, it is only ever to kill the animal. If that happens, the death is treated almost the same way as the killing of a human, with crime scene re-enactments, witness statements, and potential prosecution. No one on the Greg Mortimer had ever had to resort to shooting a bear, and all hoped they never would. 

Despite all the precautions and many regulations around the animals, from 2025, Svalbard will become an even stricter destination. Landing sites will be closed – from around 240 recognised sites, only 43 will be permitted. Minimum distances for bears will increase to 500m, and 150m for walruses, their sometimes prey. It will become so difficult to take satisfying photographs that only those with the most powerful lenses will be able to capture anything at all. As a whole, Norwegian territory will become a less welcoming place for people looking to see bears. All of which is to say, for those sailing in the summer of 2024, the trip really was a once-in-a-lifetime, never to be repeated. 

Time ran away from us on Svalbard, and as it decreased, paranoia began to envelop the ship: what if we somehow got through three weeks in the high Arctic and didn’t see a bear at all? After four days around this famously bear-laden archipelago, we were still to see a single one. It began to impact on the rest of the experience. The soaring bird cliffs at Alkefjellet were somehow disappointing; the foetid groups of walrus hauled out on frozen shores were ultimately dull. What the passengers wanted to know was where the bears were.

Of all polar misadventures north and south, few expeditions are more obviously doomed than Salomon August Andrée’s lunatic balloon mission in 1897. The Swede’s idea was to fly a hot air balloon from the northwest of Svalbard to the North Pole. If he succeeded, Andrée and two companions would be the first men to reach this singular navigation point. This plan had a few issues, including the fact that no one really had any idea what they were doing. After just over two days of flailing, the balloon inevitably crashed, and the would-be explorers were forced to man-haul their supplies back south. For almost two months, they lived on the ice, and then… Nothing. 

It took 33 years before their remains were discovered, far south from their crash site, on the ‘White Island’ of Kvitoya. Perhaps the men were poisoned; possibly they starved. At least one theory posits that polar bears killed them. 

The morning we dropped anchor off the island’s rarely visited shores, we aimed to reach a little plaque dedicated to the men and their astonishing folly. But as the Zodiacs were lowered into the cold sea, a radio call went out to let us know we wouldn’t be able to land.

From the bridge, staff had spotted a bear. No, two bears… Hold on, there’s a third bear. As a morning sea mist rolled back, an aurora of polar bears was revealed. Trembling with excitement and perhaps a bit of the cold, we loaded the Zodiacs and quickly made our way to the prize.

Forming a tight, continually moving formation, our boats did their best to avoid disturbing the animals while still maintaining our safe distance to shore. In the end, had they had eyebrows, these majestic predators would not have raised them. We seemed invisible, and their indifference to our presence felt almost insulting.

The same was, of course, not true the other way around. Every step, every yawn… No matter what the bears did, we were fascinated. A look to the left triggered a thousand photographs from each Zodiac. A yawn and a sighting of the lethal teeth triggered 10,000 more. We hung on their every move. When one headed to the shoreline to tear at the remnants of a dead walrus – almost certainly the reason so many bears were gathered here in the first place – there were audible gasps. 

Back on the warm ship, people babbled with excitement that night, electrifying the atmosphere. We’d been made to wait for the bears, but now it felt like we’d never be without them.