Page 45 - ELITE PLUS MAGAZINE VOL9

prey on his favorite food, ringed seals. Polar Bear No. 1 seemed to have brought us luck. The next 7 days after the first sighting, we saw 10 more bears on different islands making the total number of 11 bears seen at the end of the cruise. The biggest polar bear we saw was No. 8 which was a huge male on Karl XII Island. As we were photographing the bear from the zodiac, he came down to the rocky beach to scrutinize us but didn’t attempt to go into the water to chase after our zodiac. We spent five more minutes with him then left him inpeace.It was Polar Bear No. 10 whichgave us some excitement as we approached Phippsoya Island in a zodiac. This young male was lying on snow and perked up when he saw our zodiac approaching. He got up and walked down to the beach staring at us. Then he did the unexpected thing by going into the water and swimming toward our zodiac. We were not certain of his motive, whether it was curiosity or hunger. We sped the zodiac away from him to let him realize that he couldn’t catch up with us. The bear got the message, gave up the chase, swam back to the beach, and went up to lie down on the snow.This incident confirmed that polar bear danger is real as evident by the warning signs we saw around two communities at Longyearbyen and Ay Eslund on Svalbard. On each landing, each group of passengers from the ship was led by an experienced guide armed with a flare pistol to scare a polar bear away and a high-powered rifle capable of stopping a charging polar bear at 40 meters. The landing passengers must stay behind a guide and must not stray from the group. Polar bears could be anywhere and could move very fast, and they are not afraid of humans. If a polar bear was spotted from the zodiac, the landing on that island was aborted, and weA sign at a village on Svalbard warned of polar bear danger.Elite+ 43