We spent a total of thirty nights in Svalbard recently; firstly ten nights on board the M/S Freya followed by twenty nights on the M/S Malmo. The main aim was to find and photograph Polar Bears, preferably on ice and with the gorgeous backdrops of the islands of Svalbard. The ice charts looked very promising with a lot of pack ice close to the north and fast and fjord ice near the islands themselves. However conditions were very challenging and much of the ice was difficult to navigate even with class 1A icebreakers, and additionally the ice was not productive for wildlife. Our superb guides, Rinie, Morten and Nozomi spent many hundreds of hours scanning for bears and they were succesful - an amazing feat given the conditions. With any wildlife encounters it is not the quantity of sightings, but the quality, and we certainly had some superb encounters with Polar Bears, Walrus, Bearded Seals and Arctic Foxes. In Mohnbukta we spent time with a curious mother and yearling and the views of them from the zodiac with the glacier behind were worth a trip in itself! A mother with a cub-of-the-year provided another excellent encounter as they walked along the shoreline in Murchisonfjorden. Overall Wahlenbergfjorden was the most productive area with some close encounters, amazing reflections and interesting behaviour. Svalbard itself is a beautiful area and the scenery and ice were at times breathtaking.

Huge thanks to Morten, Nozomi and Rinie - an outstanding and fun team - and also to all the crew members of the M/S Freya and the M/S Malmo.

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