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Svalbard part 10 |
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30 Juni 2003: Today our arctic plant ecology course started. The first day was the mandatory "safety course", all the students that study at UNIS have to take this course. The course started with a lecture on the dangers and risks on Svalbard. With many horrible stories about people that fell into glacier cravesses or people that were attacked by polar bears. After the lecture the group was divided in two groups. Our group started with how to survive in the water. We went to the fjord and got a survival suit. These are large suits with a hat. They are waterproof and you can float in them. The mission was clear: jump overboard into the ice cold water. Unfortunately, my suit was too large so I got a lot of that ice cold water inside my suit. But still it was a lot of fun to jump out of the Zodiak and float in the water. Because we had some time left we took a small tour to the other site of the fjord. There we looked at the remains of an old miners settlement. In the afternoon we had to do the shooting course again. When we arrived at home there was a Glaucious Gull walking just in front of our window. So I quickly took a picture out of the living room.  Glaucous gull |
1 Juli 2003: Today was a very busy day. We started at 9:15 with an introduction lecture. In the afternoon our teacher told us the plans for the cruise. It turned out that the route was even more beautiful then we had expected. The plan is to go to the South first. Then we go to the north past Prins Karls Forland. We will visit Ny Alesund and after that we will go all the way up north to the most northern-tip of Svalbard and then just around the corner into Raudfjorden. The cruise will be seven days. We were very happy to hear that we would go that far north because there you have a better chance of seeing a walrus or polar bear. It was fantastic that we got the opportunity to make such a cruise. We will go all the way up north to see an "arctic dessert". That evening I climbed up the mountain behind our barracks with another student to watch the little auks. On the way up we noticed that there were a lot of flowers. Spring has started! It was great to find a lot of lichens on the steep parts of the mountains. This is because the reindeer can't reach the lichens there. They are only able to eat what they can find on the flat parts.  Lichens and mosses. |
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