Amazing. We have reached the ice edge, and are now breaking ice.

I have not seen this with my own eyes before, and it definitely beats watching it on TV a million times over. Several of us are looking at the ice.

You don't really get tired of it. When the the Oden cracks the ice huge ”rivers” are formed that extend quite far. In front of Oden the large cracks that build up slowly and once they. You can stick your head over the railing and watch down as chunks of ice larger than the average car are continuously sucked in under the boat and are broken apart. Then, charged by their buoyancy, ice pieces jump out of the water with huge splashes, turquoise in colour and not white. Oden is obviously made for this, and to quote a colleague “it feels like being onboard the town hall moving along the water”. Despite this you feel so small. I would be standing in the laboratory – and suddenly the ice will get thicker and the ship would vibrate harder and then would look at each other and smile.

I guess, I should tell you how awesome it also is with the many animals here. Someone saw a walrus, many saw seals, and there are plenty of birds hanging around the boat. Yesterday as we were making a large opening through some pretty thick ice the noise from the black-legged kittiwakes was rather intense. They were happy – we had opened up new fishing grounds for them. The odd Ivory gull, Glaucous gull, Glaucous-winged gull, a few Shearwaters, Dovekie, and lots of Thick-billed Murres and the odd Black guillemot. Also some Skuas. Now I am just waiting for Ross´s gull! That would be cool.

Oh – and we saw a polar bear yesterday. I was in the midst of pulling up heavy equipment on the side of the Oden (we were at a stop for test deployments – no sampling), and my close colleague Jorien came up behind me and almost whispered – if you look up you can see a polar bear. It looked just like it should. Yellowy against the ice, moving fast, stopping to look around, all with the characteristic silhouette they have. I feel so fortunate to be part of all this. I wish I could share it with everyone!