Bear Island / Bjørnøya
A rocky fog-swept oasis in the Barents Sea and our final landfall in Svalbard for 2002. Spectacular cliffs of ancient limestone soar out of the dark sea, threaded with silver waterfalls, dripping with bright greenery, home to tens of thousands of seabirds.
Beneath the waves these same cliffs are equally rugged and equally rich with life. Red and brown macroalgae, brightly colored encrusting sponges, crabs, anemones, tunicates, and worms, virtually every square millimeter is densely packed with layer upon layer of strange and beautiful organisms. Swept by nutrient-laden currents and nourished by a never-ending rain of organic material from the cliffs above, this ocean oasis is the Barents Sea at its richest and most diverse. Though the water temperature hovers in the mid-thirties, the density and beauty of the rocky reefs here rivals any coral ecosystem of the tropical seas far to the south.
Exploring these submarine walls and canyons with our digital video rig, I encountered sunshine yellow encrusting sponges, a single individual covering several square yards of surface, dotted here and there with pink and white tunicates. Nearby northern krill gathered in dimly lit cul-de-sacs and large ctenophores (comb jellies) drifted by like starships made of glass, their ciliated comb rows refracting the light into a rainbow lightshow. Everywhere activities of life and death were being played out before my camera as grazing anemones extended their hypodermic-tipped tentacles into the current and slow moving molluscs raided the sessile communites like vikings, pillaging and plundering and then looking to their own defense. Even the lovely nudibranchs, so delicate and beautiful to our eyes, are truly voracious predators, consuming hydroids, bryozoans and sponges like animated vacuum cleaners.
The submarine world is a fascinating and seldom seen side of the Arctic; those of us traveling on the Endeavour are privileged to be able to observe it together. To add a final layer of excitement, this is genuine exploration; we are looking into scenes and studying wildlife seldom, if ever, seen before. Bear Island is truly an isolated Arctic oasis, lost halfway between Svalbard and the North Cape, surrounded by hundreds of miles of open ocean. This unfamiliar nudibranch may well be an endemic species, at home in this lonely place and nowhere else in the world.
Today we crossed the Barents Sea to the North Cape, returning to continental shores. Our journey south now stretches before us, full of beauty and surprises above and below the sea, rich with contrasts to the Arctic archipelago to which we have now said farewell.
