This iceberg is infested with bears

This was a bear that didn’t care. But it was having a good look at us anyway. It casually paddled along about 50 metres away from the ship, peering up at the camera lenses and binoculars that represented the human race.

Polar Bear on cliff

And then it carried on around the stern and out of sight. I had never seen a polar bear in the wild before, and I was almost shaking with excitement.

The polar bear is one of the great carnivores of the world, and one of the most emotive symbols of the Arctic. There had been much debate about whether we’d see one at all – the berg is about 50 miles from the coastline and that’s a long way for a bear to swim. The hope of seeing one was tempered by practical concerns. We want to spend most of this week working and camping on the ice and you don’t want a bear rummaging through your kit when you’re not looking. We knew that bears might be attracted to the ice in the hope of finding seals here, so it wasn’t unreasonable to think that there might be one or two around.

By the end of the day we had seen nine. This iceberg is infested with bears.

The day had been spent steaming around the iceberg, mapping out its shape above and below the waterline and looking for a suitable place to moor the ship. Bears apparently like to perch on cliffs where they can watch the sea, and their yellow-ish fur really stands out against the bright white ice. These bears are confident and curious, happy to wander along to where they can see us best and then just sit and watch. After a while they get bored and wander off. There are almost certainly more than we saw – the iceberg surface undulates and we couldn’t see very far into the interior.

The cliffs here are spectacular. The ice is clearly very hard and the vertical cliff faces look like broken marble. It’s shiny and the thin layer of meltwater on top glistens in the sun. I spent a while wondering how hard it is for the bears to grip the surface, because it really does look like an ice rink. Do they use their claws to dig in, or are the pads of their paws grippy enough?

Anyway, the bears got here first. We are probably going to scale back our plans to camp, since no-one wants a curious bear coming to visit the tea tent. But it won’t stop us doing what we need to do. We have several methods for distracting and discouraging our ursine companions, but my favourite is probably the simplest and easiest. Apparently bears don’t like curry, and so leaving a container of fierce curry as you beat a quiet retreat is enough to make them stop, sniff, lick and decide that they’ve got better things to be doing.

I just looked out of the window of my cabin and saw two black noses turn towards the ship. A mother and nearly-grown cub had just glanced towards me and after a few seconds they sauntered off. The last I saw of them was their hind legs disappearing into the fog. But I’m sure that there will be more.