The new regulations threatening Arctic cruises

Telegraph

a day ago

When our waiter pointed through the restaurant window and exclaimed 'polar bear', I could swear the MS Spitsbergen listed, such was the rush to starboard. I was on a cruise up the coastline of western Svalbard, and we all wanted to see one. Yet this distant 'bear' sighting turned out to be a plump, white-coated reindeer – and the queue for omelettes soon reformed.
How close we would actually get to one during Hurtigruten Expeditions' first 'Return of the Sun' voyage of the season, as winter's sea-ice cracked apart, was, however, another matter. That's because strict new conservation regulations governing how to see polar bears in Svalbard have just come into effect.
The Norwegian government's new regulations mean ships cannot carry more than 200 passengers (we were 98), sites deemed fragile have been closed to landings, and there is firm guidance on not disturbing or pursuing polar bears. Which all seems sensible. What has caused some uproar is a diktat that between March 1 and June 30 (a period when females have young cubs) the closest distance a ship can view polar bears from is 500 metres. This drops to 300 metres for the rest of the year.
One local Norwegian small-ship operator irately told me it would be the death of Svalbard cruising as even with powerful cameras and binoculars sightings would be too distant. He also showed me a recent video posted online of a scientific research helicopter harassing a polar bear with cubs. 'No cruise ship ever behaved so badly to the bears – it's a different rule for them,' he said.
Still, I was optimistic – perhaps due to the serotonin overdose of midnight sun that blazed all night through my cabin window as we traversed a snowbound coastline of Toblerone-shaped mountains and glistening glaciers. Maybe I'd roll up my blackout blind to see a bear bobbing shipside on a piece of ice floe? Although if I did, the new regulations would require the ship to withdraw immediately to 500 metres away.
Monica Votvik, the ship's Norwegian expedition leader, laughed: 'We don't tend to get those National Geographic encounters'. She was uncertain as to whether the regulation's rationale was conservation or to control tourism. 'I have been up around Svalbard for 15 years and had a lot of bear encounters and never once seen our operation disturb them. Mostly the bears are unbothered by our presence,' she added.
Their population, she said, has been stable and last year's bears were fat with big bellies. Around 300 inhabit Svalbard, part of the Barents Sea population of 3,000, which roam across the ice eastwards to Russia's Franz Joseph Land. Since 1973 it has been illegal to hunt them here. An estimated 28,000 were killed during the century prior to the ban.
Polar bears are not the sole focus of Svalbard voyages, Monica insisted. 'We don't call these wildlife cruises. It's about being in nature, among the glaciers and mountains,' she said.
And she was right. During landings by zodiac dinghies we saw hauled-out walruses at Smeerenburg, squeezed together on a beach, some flat on their voluminous backs with ivory tusks pointing skywards. At Calypsobyen, the thwarted ambition is palpable of the abandoned workings of the British Northern Exploration Company's failed attempt at coal-mining between 1918-20.
At Gravnesodden, the souls within the 17th-century graves of English, Dutch, and Basque whalers felt present in wavy murmurations of little auks overhead. One night a minke whale arched beyond the ship's bow. The perpetual soundtrack was barnacle geese migrating here in their thousands.
Our polar bear moment arrived in the majestic snowbound Raudfjörden. At around 9pm, after a Norwegian seafood buffet, we crowded on Spitsbergen's bow when two bears had been spotted from the bridge. We edged closer, still well outside the new limit, but were halted by impenetrable ice, imprinted by a bear's heavy paw prints. I could make out the bears through binoculars virtually motionless staring at each other. They were pinpricks on the horizon, but this felt an authentically real way to experience their free-roaming lifestyles in the context of this immense Arctic wilderness.
'These distant sightings are the norm,' said Monica's assistant, Joshua van der Groen. 'If we saw them on the shoreline like this we would never land but previously would've launched the zodiacs to get closer whilst maintaining a respectful difference,' he said. The remote bear sighting however didn't worry fellow passengers, Ian and Jackie Ross, from Skye. 'We hadn't heard about the regulations before booking but they wouldn't have put us off,' they said. 'We didn't expect to see bears but came for nature and scenery. Any wildlife has been a bonus'.
There is a suggestion that operators will sail beyond Svalbard's territorial waters, 12 miles out, to where the new regulations have no authority. It was in that zone, beyond 80°N, we saw one of Europe's most sublime spectacles: the southern edge of the polar ice front. Ahead of us was a white barrier that spanned the entire horizon. It was 600 nautical miles from there to the North Pole.
Across its expanse polar bears can roam all the way to Russian islands. 'It will be interesting to see if ships do come here looking for bears, although you'd be very unlikely to see them due to the ice's extent,' said Joshua. Only early-season spring voyages are likely to sail to this ice-front because in summer it retreats. 'That would mean ships using a lot more fuel to reach it and more sea days, which would mean less landings, which guests enjoy,' he said.
The biggest threat polar bears face is the retreat of Arctic sea ice – this winter's extent was the lowest on record – which undermines their ability to hunt seals on the ice floe. These new cruise regulations will therefore make little difference to wider efforts to conserve polar bears, but nor, thankfully, do they significantly diminish the experience of witnessing wild and magnificent Svalbard.
Mark Stratton was a guest of Hurtigruten Expeditions. Its voyage costs from £5,540 per person including regional flights and hotel accommodation.