Some of the researchers have had to wait quite a lot over the last couple of days to do their work. If there isn’t any work or preparations to do, people pass the time by reading, watching movies, working out in the gym or hanging out at the bridge.

Yesterday evening we deployed the last mooring line, which means that we finally can start the ice work. The current plan is to go down on the ice after lunch. The ice conditions are good, but unfortunately visibility is very low at the moment. It would be difficult to see polar bears approaching and because of safety reasons we will have to stay very close to Oden. Hopefully the weather gets better during the day, but our meteorologists won’t promise anything.

Mathias Söderling is securing Oden to the ice. Martin Indreiten, UNIS, is on polar bear watch. Photo: Jan-Ola Olofsson

Oh, and we had a visitor this morning. We have basically been still during the night and early in the morning a passing polar bear decided it wanted to check out the icebreaker. It was hanging out nearby for a while, waiting for something interesting to happen, but left as soon as we started moving again after breakfast.

Polar bear. Photo: Jan-Ola Olofsson

Jan-Ola Olofsson, Swedish Polar Research Secretariat