WORDS BY | Lynsey Smith
I knew that the wildlife photography opportunities on this trip weren't going to be easy. Photographing at sea never is. You move, the boat moves, the sea moves, the things in the sea move. But add highly hunted animals to that list and it becomes a real challenge, especially when you only have ten days in an area that few people ever travel to.
I've visited places like the Galapagos, where the wildlife is so well protected and has so much trust in humans, it gets too close to you to photograph! But Baffin Island in Arctic Canada was the extreme opposite.
Everything is hunted. Polar bears, walrus, seals, and caribou, and all species of whales found in the area, including Narwhal (unicorns!), Bowhead and Beluga, are hunted too.
Given the location (and the danger that comes with the animals in that area), the best option was a trip with very experienced guides. Not only can they keep you safe, but they also know the wildlife and what to look for: it takes time to get accustomed to an area, and on a short trip you don't always have that luxury.
A choppy sea and a foggy morning were not ideal photography conditions, but that was the weather on the first zodiac trip from the ice-strengthened ship I was traveling on. But three polar bears had been sighted and that was not an opportunity to be missed! A mother and cub were resting high on the rocky coastline, watching us as intently as we were watching them. A male bear was further along the shore and was most likely hunting them, and a herd of walruses had been spotted a little further still along the coast. It always takes me a few days to get back into being able to spot wildlife.
I'd been looking through my binoculars at some distant rocks, trying to spot the walruses the guides were pointing to. We got closer and one of the rocks moved; I had been staring at the walrus for around ten minutes but hadn’t realised how well camouflaged they were.
We edged closer and, even if you still couldn’t see them, you could smell them. Thick fog and choppy waters resulted in a lot of blurry sea shots, but lying down using the edge of the zodiac for stability helped. We edged closer to get a better view, but one took a dislike to us and half the herd disappeared into the water, so we backed off.
By the time we had caught up with the polar bear mum and cub round the coast, the fog had cleared a little and the sea was calmer. They'd moved further down the mountain and were now close enough to photograph, sitting next to the last block of ice on the shore.
I typically spend most of my time lying down taking photographs at eye level with animals, and I'm usually covered in cuts and bruises and filthy by the end of the day, but getting down to the animals’ level allows me to take a far more intimate photograph. The bears never came down low enough to achieve this, but I like the results I got with them being higher up: my photos demonstrate just how how big and powerful they are.
It was another two days before we had any encounters close enough to photograph: another mother and cub (bears five and six of the day) on some ice flows that had drifted together. Unruffled by, and perhaps even entertained by, the presence of humans, they proceeded across to the edge of the ice as the ship slowed to a halt. The mother sniffed the air and watched us for a while before deciding we were no threat. The cub, even less interested, returned to its game; it would pounce on the edge of the ice, ever careful to avoid falling in, and then lie down and try to catch and eat the broken ice fragments. The fog made it difficult to get sharp photographs, and being high up on the ship wasn’t the ideal angle, but it was a privilege to be able to capture such behaviour.
Later on that day, bear number eight appeared in the distance, curled up and sound asleep on an ice flow. Slowly, we drifted towards it; the captain had positioned the bear on the right-hand side of the ship to give us better light, but again I felt too high up to get an intimate portrait. I tried lying down on the floor of the ship on the lowest deck, angling my camera out of the holes along the side where ropes are tied and water drains off. My fellow passengers laughed at me, but just a metre and a half in height makes all the difference to the photograph.
The ice flow had drifted next to our ship and the bear was then only around five metres away.
He woke, looking half asleep and grumpy, as I suppose you would if 100 strangers appeared next to your bed.
Then, he stretched and dipped into the water, where he swam to another ice flow about ten metres away.
For the next eight days the wildlife, while still incredible to see, was too far away to be photographed. But we were surrounded by incredible scenery that kept me clicking away contentedly: fjords, icebergs, and sunsets, among other things. On the second to last day, we reached the Akpait bird colony, a protected wildlife refuge that is home to between 100,000 and 150,000 nesting Brunnich's Guillemots, known as the penguins of the North.
The chicks tend to hurl themselves from the cliffs into the sea when they fledge; then, provided no gulls or other predators get to them, they swim out to the open sea where they are looked after by their fathers. I had no idea how to photograph this overwhelming, deafening cathedral of birds. I tried for ten minutes, but nothing could possibly communicate the scale of the cliffs or the abundance of birds. I took one last photo of an iceberg whose points matched the cliffs, then put my camera down and just soaked up the experience.
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Being able to freeze such rare moments with these animals is an amazing opportunity, one that we feel Lynsey perfectly captured. Many may never get to see animals like this in the wild and a massive thanks to Lynsey for bringing us all a little bit closer with her beautiful photographs...
To see more of Lynsey's amazing encounters with the most breath taking wildlife then do visit her site at www.lynseysmyth.com.
