Boris supervising loading the zodiacs

A foggy day with some mist welcomed us to Monumental Island. The Island was named by one of the explorers as a monument to Franklin. A nearby Island is named Lady Franklin in honour of Franklin’s wife. We had a zodiac tour, we were to circumnavigate the island but spent time watching some polar bears on the island and 2 herds of walrus in the water.

In total we have seen 7 polar bears today there was a mother and 2 cubs plus a couple of big males. The guides said they all looked healthy and well fed. The walrus were in large groups beside rock outcroppings, swimming, diving, rearing out of the water as they were feeding. All walrus have huge tusks that there use to pull themselves along through snow and ice.

The mist turned to rain before we returned to the ship – I had to remind Gary how lucky he is!!

Doesn’t this look warm and inviting!

Getting a zodiac with some kayaks back on board

In the afternoon a panel of the lecturers discussed their view of the future of the Arctic. They are concerned about development, shipping through the passage or even over the top, loss of habitats that support the animal and invasion of new species eg the Orcas.

The Polar Bear expert said their will be no polar bears in the Hudson Bay Area but they will flourish further north as the climate changes and there is more open areas and sea ice further north. While the caribou herds are way down they believe this may be a cyclical issue and they are likely moving further north as their normal food source on the tundra is not as readily available locally. They believe the tree line will move further north and this will change animal behaviour.

The permafrost holds a lot of carbon and as it melts the carbon is being released into the atmosphere, adding even more carbon to the already existing issue which further speeds up the climate change. Despite this we were told this year was the highest amount of ice ever recorded in the Arctic, this was confirmed by our guide, Monica, at our last stop who talked about the ice they had this year.

In the evening we saw a slide show put together by the ship’s photographer which we all got a copy of.

In the evening we heard the winning tweets The winner was – “Running perilously low on scotch, gin and tonic. Ice supply ok.”

Second prize was -“I should not have listened to my wife!!!”

My favourite – “To: Lady Jane From: John Franklin F***off! I told you when I left- it’s over, I’m not coming back; stop trying to find me!”

“To: Lady Jane From: John Franklin I see you flirting with Ross on Facebook. And you’ve changed your status to ‘New relationship.’ My heart is frozen. I’m not coming back.”