mark prior photography

A few days in Longyearbyen, the largest town in Svalbard, followed by a cruise around the islands in search of wildlife and beautiful scenery.

Don't look for trees in Svalbard, You need to look closer to the ground to find the hardy plants. Here some Mountain Sorrel pokes through some gravel.
All traces of human activity from before 1946 are strictly protected so while in other locations this sort of site would need a clean up in Svalbard it's a historic site.
Not something you see in your typical school drop off but a sign that it gets cold in winter. A line of power outlets strapped to a wooden fence. The enclosure of the closest one is broken so that you can see the outlets inside and a digital display.
Wooden enclosure reinforced with what looks like railway tracks. Some metal machinery in visible and well rusted.
A view of the housing blocks in Longyearbyen and the fjord beyond the town.
Not much use in winter but in summer when the sun doesn't set then this sundial will tell the time. Although the photo was taken when it was raining there is still a faint shadown on the dial.
A road leads out of town along the Advent Valley. Snow capped mountains provide a background to the waterway in the valley.
The remaining Russian settlement of Barentsburg wasn't on the tour but we cruised past it as we departed the fjord.
The Germans had established a weather station near Signehamna which the Norwegians destroyed in 1942. As it is a WW2 site it has been left as a historic site even if it little more than rusting 44 gallon drums and other debris.
Nesting season can be difficult. The nests are well camouflaged and your first warning that you are getting close is a close pass by an angry bird.
Bird Cliffs of Kapp Fanshawe, where a hundred thousand Brünnich’s guillemots (thick-billed murres) congregate to breed.
Meltwater waterfalls cascading down the rock cliffs of the Alkefjellet glacier
Far in the disstance a group of polar bears, a mother and two cubs, stroll across the ice.
We arrived at this site to find a curious scene. A large male bear lying on a pile of snow and a female with a cub a small distance away staring at him. Eventually he got up and stretched. Then out of his pillow appeared lunch!
Once lunch was revealed a number of other bears appeared from across the ice to liberate "lunch" from the old bear. First the female and cub were chased away and then this one appeared and got the same treatment.
Bråsvellbreen glacier front, a portion of the Austfonna ice cap located on Nordaustlandet. One of the longest glacier fronts in the Northern Hemisphere, stretching approximately 180 kilometers. It is a tidewater glacier, meaning it flows directly into the sea, where it calves icebergs.
A newly arrived walrus is greeted on the edge of the huddle. The walruses have hauled themselves up the beach at Torellneset and are continually changing positions in the group to keep warm. The newly arrived walrus as climbed the slope behind to join the group.
A continous task was looking for bears. So we could avoid them when we wanted to land otherwise just to admire them. This one was seen at a distance and it saw us. The captain slowly moved the ship in its direction and it slowly crossed the ice towards the ship. The ship stopped but the bear kept coming, eventually reaching the bow of the ship to look up at us while we looked down.
After awhile looking up at us the bear decided that we just weren't interesting enough so it turned around and wandered off across the ice.
The naturalists were very excited when this humpack whale decided to utilise the bow of the ship as part of its fishing strategy. Normally a group of whales would blow bubbles creating a virtual net around a school of fish. This whale was doing it solo with the help of the ship and so it was very close.
Scattered ice floes and brash ice in the foreground and Nordaustlandet in the background.
The midnight sun provides plenty of opportunities for photography.
A group of walruses stop their feeding to check out the noisy visitors.
A group of walrus haule out on a beach on Storoya. Most of the island is covered by ice so this is a rare piece of ice free land.
Frankenhalvøya isn't often visited but we did and we found a trapper's hut. The naturalists opened it up so we could have a look and then returned it to its original state so that the polar bears couldn't get in.
Fuel drums on pallets standing next to the trapper's hut.
Tiny purple flowers hugging the ground.
A river had been carved across the glacier and it created a massive waterfall once it reached the sea. The melt water turned the sea from a pristine blue to a murky brown but it also stirred up the planktonic organisms on the bottom creating a feast for the thousands of Black-legged Kittiwakes, Northern Fulmars, Ivory Gulls, and Arctic Terns.
An ever present companion to the ship were the northern fulmars. This one gliding past the ship with a glacier in the background.
Some tiny mushrooms poke out from a clump of moss.