Sunday 10 August 2014

Sparkling glacier ice

So we were on the way down south to Bellsund with high speed, doing 14.5 knots! The plan was to arrive about 15 o’clock in Recherchefjorden, but what to do until then? The team of MV Fram put up lectures, so first we could dive into the geology of Svalbard with Steffen – and yes, geology rocks! For the german speakers, Manuel together with Ralf told us the little secrets about the feathered creatures flying around on Svalbard. And from the birds it went straight on to Svalbards hunters – the trappers! 
But if you now think, that was all a looong time ago – compared with some age of the glaciers on Svalbard that’s nothing! Also this we learnt this morning.. So, but enough about lectures and learning, it was time to get off the ship! But… what was awaiting us when we were arriving at Recherchefjorden? A polar bear… The white fellow was luckily not very interested in us and still quite far away, so we could do the landing! And what a landing: right in front of the glacier on the terminal moraine we got dropped off by the polar circle boats! From far we could hear the glacier’s calving – and all the big pieces of glacier ice on the sandy moraine pit looked sparkled crystal clear and looked just beautiful! 
We were wandering around, of course watching the polar bear from a safe distance and we encountered its traces all over the place on the sand! How big they were, impressive! On the side of the mountains we could clearly see the lateral moraine of the glacier, so where we were actually standing it was all glacier – which was quite impressive to see as well! The time went quick and soon it was time to leave this marvelous place – not without 5 bags full of garbage we collected on the shoreline!