Liefdefjorden, Woodfjord and Fugelsonge
This morning we awoke to find ourselves just off the spectacular glacier face of Monacobreen at the terminus of Liefdefjorden, one of the many beautiful glacial valleys that cut deeply into the northwest coast of Spitsbergen. Black-legged Kittiwakes, Glaucous Gulls and Ivory Gulls swirled in the bright sunshine, fluttering down to settle on the pale green water just below the wall of ice, where the strong currents of a melt water river emerged from the glacier. What were they feeding on? What kind of marine life can tolerate the challenging conditions of Arctic fjords? Monacobreen is a particularly good place to ask these questions, since it is named after Prince Albert I of Monaco, who led an important early oceanographic expedition to these fjords aboard his yacht the Princess Alice. And National Geographic Explorer is a perfect vessel on which to seek the answers.
Fjords are waterways carved by the tremendous erosive force of glaciers and then flooded by the sea after the glaciers retreat. These waters contain a marine habitat that is unusual in a number of ways. First, fjords are deep, often 1000 feet or more, and they are dark. Little or no light can penetrate the depths of most fjords because their waters are usually very cloudy with the suspended glacial sediments that give them their characteristic milky green color. Fjords are also often isolated from the adjacent water of the open sea by shallow sills of moraine or bedrock at their mouths. For all these reasons, fjords are a difficult place for marine creatures to live; nevertheless, there is life in the darkest depths of Arctic fjords, a community of strange and wonderful creatures.
A few days ago we had an opportunity to explore the bottom of Palanderbukta, a wide fjord in the west coast of Nordaustland, using our ROV. Descending through the turbid water into the darkness, this little robot sub sent us back good images of the dense rain of marine snow, the decaying kelp, seabird feces and other detritus that provides the vital food source for the animals dwelling on the bottom. A rich community of plankton also inhabits these waters, including many chaetognaths or arrow worms, two-inch-long creatures that were probably the main targets of the seabirds we watched feeding at Monacobreen.
Once on the bottom, the ROV revealed an amazing world of permanent darkness beneath the midnight sun; freezing cold and under tremendous pressure from the water above, the muddy bottom was covered with animals of many kinds. Sea spiders crawled slowly over the soft sediment and perched on the stalks of tube anemones. Miniature forests of tube worms raised their delicate flowery heads to catch the fall of marine snow and crowds of brittle stars writhed on the surface of the mud, taking their food from the same source after it had accumulated on the floor of the fjord. A few fish waited patiently for their prey and a large snail made a meal of a dead cephalopod. Best of all, we encountered an unidentified sea slug that our cameras had not recorded previously and another strange creature, possibly a stalked crinoid, that slowly unfolded a crown of branched arms into a basket, clearly another mechanism for gathering the rain of food descending from the realm of light above.
Just as ice is iconic of the seas of the Arctic, in many ways fjords define the islands of Svalbard. There is very little flat ground here and in many places the rugged mountains fall directly into the depths of these flooded valleys. During our week together, using all the tools and technology of our expedition vessel, we have had wonderful opportunities to explore, discuss and photograph a variety of these spectacular landscapes, including the hidden ones far below the surface of the sea.
