After we left the Bearded Seals behind, two more interesting things happened during the zodiac cruise near Monacobreen. First thing was the glacier looked different from the previous years. Over the past decades, the Monacobreen has receded quite a bit, revealing a new island and separating the Seligerbreen from the larger Monacobreen. However, this year the glacier was surging a little. This is a process where a glacier suddenly moves forward at a much faster speed as it normally does. It doesn’t mean the glacier as a whole is growing, as it’s just a movement of the ice down the mountain because the pressure higher up has become more as the friction of the glacier on the surface (or maybe because there has formed a thin layer of meltwater between the glacier and bedrock, reducing the friction). Anyhow, for us, this meant the glacier suddenly looked different and places where we could easily drive our zodiacs last year, were now covered in a thick layer of ice. Let’s see how this looks next year…

While we were cruising along the glacier front, we found another seal hauled out on a small piece of ice. Another Bearded Seal? No, a Walrus!! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Walrus in front of the Monacobreen or this deep into Liefdefjord. She was a young female, still without tusks and was quite shy. No possibility to come close for close up pictures. But a wide-angle picture with the massive glacier front behind it is something different again.