Reckoning with Ice; Svalbard 2022

By: Andrea Sparrow
Days aboard a ship can be difficult to parse afterwards. Routine gives structure to time, but around you the land and weather are constantly shifting. In Svalbard this seems particularly true. For a time the land will present itself as gentle hills, covered in stone, snow and ice. Around a corner a sudden patch of brilliant green will appear. Fed by unseen waters, the opportunity for abundant life is manifested in a place waiting to be awakened from glacial sleep. Further along, a massive glacier, all deep and bright blues, cuts between monochrome mountains. Broken ice jostles before these great faces, diamonds bobbing in deep green water. Wind blows ice and water and into a frothing, raucous melee. Animals, rarely teeming, but constantly present, make their lives in the spaces of shore and shallow waters. The colors here are profound for their relative rarity. A landscape wrought in black and white will hold these small spaces of iron red, turquoise blue, verdant green or honeyed yellow like complicated tapestries woven with sudden threads of color.


Photo by: Andrea Sparrow

Photo by: Kerry Koepping

Birds are the most abundant creatures on these lands. So many species, sometimes at odds with one another, reeling in the ice, on the cliffs, skipping over waves. Our guides Ole and Eric are expert spotters. Eric, in particular, knows each bird species from just a glimpse. We’ve all gotten to “bird”, while he has named the species, determined male or female and whether it is a juvenile or adult. He can tell us its habits, its food and how changing climate is affecting, or will affect, its ability to survive in this place in the future.

Photo by: Andrea Sparrow

Photo by: Kerry Koepping

We’ve seen seals bobbing in the shallow waters near shore and swimming in quiet, glacial bays. Harbor seals, Ring seals, Bearded Seals, Harp Seals. Our guides know from a glance who we’ve spotted. Some, like the bearded seal and ring seal, are shy. They see us from a distance, take a breathe and submerge to the safety of their water world. Others, like the harbor seals, are unfazed. Balancing their unlikely bodies on rounded stones or pieces of ice, they just glance our way and resume napping, with the occasional stretch that resembles the seal version of yoga practice. Every once in awhile, we have gotten lucky with a curious ring or bearded seal who swims closer to see what we might be. Popping up near the zodiac, their dark eyes watching carefully, they’ll have a look while we all jump in like paparazzi in the presence of royalty.


Photo by: Kerry Koepping

Photo by: Andrea Sparrow

Where seals generally look content and perhaps curious, walrus have faces that seem mournful and tolerant. A mother and cub resting on a sheath of ice were difficult to distinguish from one another until the mama realized we were coming closer. She perked up to keep an eye on us. Her little one, curious too, watched us float past. The walrus’ whiskers are a distinguishing feature. The baby had only very small whiskers and less mottling on the skin. Breathing in as they emerge from water, the sounds of a walrus are distinct and primal. You hear them before you see them. One curious male circled our zodiacs, submerging again and again, only to pop up right next to the boat to cast a baleful eye on us. Eventually he grew uninterested and slowly swam toward a beach that might hold some entertainment or food.


by: Kerry Koepping

Photo by: Andrea Sparrow

An Arctic fox, already white in preparation for winter, wandered the verdant area below cliffs that are home to thousands of birds. Even now, as most birds are moving to their winter habitat, kittywakes and gulls surf the eddies and currents near the cliffs. The fox, an opportunistic feeder is looking for any number of things that might constitute food. On delicate paws, moving easily from a trot to a run to a dead stop, the fox covered ground with a grace and lightness that was mesmerizing. Dropping down from the green below the bird cliffs to wander the blue ice on the shore, we were given a perfect moment of pause as she jumped effortlessly onto a piece of blue ice for a better view of her surroundings. Pure white, with a tail as long, and nearly big around as her body, the Arctic fox is wonderfully adapted and perfectly flexible to take advantage of this environment.


Photo By: Andrea Sparrow

Of course, the animal that most distinguishes the Arctic in general and Svalbard in particular, is the iconic polar bear. As we traveled north out of Longyearbyen, we caught sight of a few bears from a distance. White fur against deep, umber rock, the bears are often sleeping at this time of year, waiting out the last of summer before the sea ice returns with their favorite food, the seals. Seals are very difficult for the bears to catch in the water. For polar bears, their hunting grounds are the great swathes of sea ice, where seals are either resting on the ice, prey to a silent, swimming bear, or forced to come up for air through the cracks and holes in the ice. A bear might patiently wait for hours, or even days, to burst into sudden, fatal motion to capture a breathing seal. Our first close encounter with a polar bear came in the early morning hours, after a long sail north and east, into the sea ice. Not long ago, the ice retreated only to the northern reaches of the lands of Svalbard in summer. We had to travel to more than 82 degrees north to reach sea ice. We were, for a time, likely the northernmost humans on the planet. Once there, it was another world. With the engines off, the ice slowly closed in around our sturdy ship. A hundred years ago, watching your ship be overtaken by ice would be terrifying, as wooden ships were not infrequently crushed by the pressures of the solidifying ice. For us, it was simply a marvel to see the ice form terrain from which birds and animals could enjoy a bounty like no other. There are small creatures, from a variety of Zooplankton, to small crustaceans called copepods and fish that depend on the ice for their habitat. The food chain moves up from there to the Polar bear.


Photo by: Kerry Koepping

Photo by: Andrea Sparrow

In the wee hours of a September morning, the light is low, but nothing close to darkness. The words “Polar Bear” were echoing around the ship as everyone grabbed clothes and cameras and raced to the deck to see the bear in its truest habitat. In the grey-green light of the Arctic Sea, great slabs of ice formed a nearly sold terrain, and standing right next to the ship was a healthy, curious, female bear. Awesome, in the truest sense of the word. Or perhaps sublime is the right way to describe her. She ambled on giant paws with ease over cracks and ridges in the ice. For a moment she stood facing us, just looking. This perfectly evolved and adapted creature brought tears to my eyes instantly. To think that only a place like this one, with ice as far as the eye can see, is where she is truly meant to be, and we are taking it from her, with a speed that is beyond the ability of any animal to adapt or shift or adjust. There are no words to describe this loss.


Photo by: Kerry Koepping

Svalbard is warming seven times faster than the planet as a whole. I’ve always seen the Arctic as the sentinel of the changes coming to more temperate climes. It’s warming three to four times faster than the rest of the planet, but Svalbard is truly at the forefront of changing climate, warming five to seven times faster than the planet as a whole. The retreat of sea ice will be complete by the year 2050, when it is anticipated that the Arctic will begin experiencing ice free summer oceans. Glaciers are melting away hundreds of meters every year here. One of the most dramatic in Svalbard, King’s Glacier, is a shocking example. Once a single, massive glacial front, the ice has retreated to become three separate tongues where the evidence of its former magnificence is writ large on the now visible land. It feels broken to see this place hobbled with far less ice, both glacial and sea, than it is meant to have. These changes in ice impact everything else. Warmer waters change the timing of fish and whale migrations. New species are coming in with warmer waters, but the specificity of the diets of birds and animals here is astounding. There may be an abundance of zooplankton, but none are the right ones for a particular whale. There may be many copepods, but the one a given bird is evolved to eat may be missing altogether as the water becomes too warm to sustain it. If fish come North too early, birds that breed in time to feed on them may miss them and be unable to raise their young. There are so many ways the intertwined nature of trophic webs are becoming undone. Svalbard feels on the verge of a precipice in this way. Too many pieces are changing and too quickly.


Photo by: Kerry Koepping

Photo by: Andrea Sparrow

Photo by: Andrea Sparrow

Our last day on the ship dawned clear and crisp. We’d seen so many mountains wreathed in mist and fog. To wake to a clarity of air that makes everything look more vivid, with the full glory of the mountains and colors of the sea visible, was a marvel. Colors in the waters and on the snow shifted with endless subtlety. And then the dolphins came out to play. A group of 8-10 raced beneath the ship, then, with a speed and grace that make your heart jump with joy, they’d swim and leap away, only to circle back and do it again. We had one more trip in the zodiacs. A visit to glacial bay that held an almost surreal stillness. Kittywakes preening on blue ice. A walrus curled into an impossible position to give himself a scratch. Bearded seals swimming silently among the icebergs. Purple Sandpipers bouncing along the shoreline of a small island. All of it a tableau of harmony set against the deep blue of a massive glacial face. Every piece in place for the moment.


Photo by: Kerry Koepping

Photo by: Kerry Koepping

The difficulty with climate change is its pace. As humans, we struggle to keep our attention on something that shifts so slowly. It is to literally watch ice melt. But while our attention wanders to other things that feel more pressing and relevant, the inexorable changes to these ancient landscapes, to this ancient ice, continue unabated, and at a pace that in the relative terms of geological change, are happening at lightning speed. We know what we need to do to limit the damage to ecosystems and climate. What is happening in Svalbard is a glimpse into the future of our entire planet. I can tell you that to exist for a moment in that looking glass is terrifying and woeful beyond reckoning. We don’t have the right to change this planet for all of the creatures trying to live here, but that is what we are doing. I do hope we can find enough respect, enough humility and enough motivation to limit how far this will all go. It is complex and expensive, but not even close the complexity and expense of allowing climate to change everywhere as much as it is changing Svalbard.