When in summer the ice melts, some bears get stranded on land. Here they have a problem. They would like to hunt for seals, but they are out on the ice. It’s too far to swim towards the pack ice, so they have to find other food. These bears get really opportunistic. They feed on anything they can, and will check out any new thing. In this case the new thing were 8 zodiacs floating just offshore. This bear came to check us out, approached us, sat down, every now and then sniffing the air. But after some time he decided we were not interesting, so he went back to his meal, a whale that was beached last year and where there was still some meat left.

But in the meantime he had given us a really good look at himself. It’s always very impressing to be close to the King of the Arctic! I still wonder what he thought about us… We were not sure who was more interested in the others, we in the bear or the bear in us…