In addition to polar bears, another large mammal that is common to Svalbard is the walrus. I saw walruses multiple times on my trip, but the most significant time was when we took a zodiac ride close to the shore of a small island where a large herd was hanging out. This was a mornings in which the expedition was fighting some stubborn fog that had moved in. This limited our options for activities. We couldn’t go ashore and hike because the scouts couldn’t see whether or not there were polar bears. We couldn’t see the landscape for the fog. But we were able to get safely close enough to the walrus herd on the shore to observe them.

As I said, it was a foggy morning and as we rode the boats toward the shore we could generally smell them before we saw them. It turns out that a large herd of walruses laying on a beach is one of the smelliest things you can encounter. It smelled a lot like a stockyard, except quite a bit worse. But our sense of wonder and curiosity at seeing the wildlife mostly overcame our displeasure at their smell. The image below shows the odoriferous beach through the fog.

To avoid disturbing the walruses, the zodiacs kind of slowly cruised in a carousel formation near the beach, giving everyone a chance in the rotation to get a good look at the pile of walruses. It was difficult to really choose a good composition, at least for me, as it was very much dependent on what they were doing when I happened to pass by. Often there were one or two that were doing something such that you could almost get a shot focused on one. My main model, in the images below, was this large guy with the blotched face that was scooting around the beach.

These images were all shot through fog and a bit difficult to edit. In Lightroom, I generally tried to isolate the walrus or walruses with a mask and apply some dehaze and contrast. I also warmed their color up a little as the fog made them look gray. Though I did let the walruses in the background fade into the gray a bit to have a sense of depth. I think my edits were mostly subtle.

In addition to sitting around on the beach, there were often lots of walruses floating around in the shallow water which is what they are good at. They like to float in the shallow water where they can easily dive down and eat clams and such off the seabed. They seem to be well adapted and skilled at removing clams from their shells. I have read that they have also been known to eat seals.

Aside from people, there are really only two other animals they have to worry about. At sea they are vulnerable to orcas, which is their main predator. On land they can be vulnerable to polar bears, but they are generally too big and tough for a polar bear to handle without risking severe injury. The adults are far too big for a polar bear and have very think skin that the bear can’t easily penetrate. The polar bear’s only real hope is to stampede them and hope to pick up a young or injured walrus. This high risk attack is generally an act of desperation for a starving bear.

A couple of days later when the fog cleared, we found a herd of walruses happily floating just offshore of a beach that had four polar bears on it. The walruses didn’t seem to be worried and the bears expressed no interest in them as they wouldn’t have a chance in the water against a walrus. It did give me a chance to shoot them in sunlight. My main problem was getting them when their heads were far enough out of the water to get a good look at them, which just required a lot of bursts. And fortunately, when they are submerged you can’t much smell them.

After the foggy pictures we spent the rest of the day with not much to see but fog. We apparently traveled along the south coast of Nordaustlandet island, where there is reputedly a long giant glacier wall. But, this was the only real time that the weather didn’t cooperate so I have not much to complain about. Our next destination was Kvitoya, the White Island, which is the eastern most island in Svalbard and it would take until the next day to get there.