All images used in this blog are genuinely from the tour. All copyright remains with the photographer. Click on images to enlarge to full size.
‘Spitsbergen’ – that name has played around in my mind since I was a youngster. The very idea of that frozen landscape captured my imagination and created a lifelong desire to go there. At the back end of June Adele and I were once again boarding the Fred. Olsen Black Watch, where I would be carrying out my job as Wildlife Speaker. This time we would be journeying 79 degrees North to the Svalbard archipelago.
As we steamed out of heatwave Liverpool the weather forecast looked perfect for our journey up through the Sea of Hebrides and the Minch.
Spot the Difference - Liverpool (left) ...
A recent journey, along the Humboldt Current, brought home to me, just how little is really known about species distribution in one of the world’s most important biodiversity rich areas. As the frigid waters of the Humboldt power north, along the immense coastal fringes of Chile and then on to Peru, they are loaded with a maelstrom of nutrients that get dragged from the depths of the ocean abyss, up the continental slope and into the sunlit surface waters. This mechanism is the engine for a food production process that has few equals anywhere else on the planet. As a result, the Pacific Ocean in this region seemingly brims with fish, fish-eating birds and marine mammals. Even so the total number predatory animals exploiting the Humboldt Cur...
All images in this blog are copyright © Jeff Clarke 2021 Click on the image to view at full size.
After a sixteen-month hiatus courtesy of COVID-19, I finally got back out on the ocean. I had the good fortune to be selected as a guest speaker on Fred Olsen’s new ship ‘Borealis’, on one of her first outings.
Our original itinerary to Shetland and Orkney had been scuppered when a certain person in Holyrood decreed that folk from Greater Manchester were ‘unclean’. And so it was that we found ourselves setting out from Liverpool on a southerly trajectory instead. It was a lovely calm evening and Deck 6 forward on Borealis provides an ideal platform for searching out cetaceans and seabirds. The waters here are exceptionally shallow...
