Video and story by: Maxby Chan

Some photos by members of the Svalbard Photosafari

There are less than 3,000 polar bears living in Svalbard region. Finding it is not that easy given the vast landscape where it can easily camouflage itself. Most of the cruise ships depend on shared information to bring visitors to get a glimpse of this supreme predator of the Arctic. We followed that shared information and were disappointed. While one can see a polar bear from afar. Even an 840mm telephoto lens could hardly capture the speck of the polar bear at a distance. Most of the sightings were in the Northwest Region of the Spitsbergen. However, by the 6th day, we could not get a decent image of this elusive predator. We then proceed to the South of Longyearbyen. We were lucky to accidentally stumbled on the fresh footprints of a polar bear. Have a look at the video and join us in our discovery of a mature polar bear that was about 7-8 ft long.