09-08-2025 | 71°15’N 157°36’W
Twenty nautical miles off Point Barrow, and the fog is lifting. A glorious moment in the early morning. For a long time, the cold had been noticed only in its absence—no longer. It is real now. As real as the walrus’s contour in the mist. A splash of water, and two tusks. Three brown heads pop up, as startled as I am.
“They’re here,” all four of us seem to think. I turn off the engine and head toward the disturbed water they’ve left behind. One more nervous appearance, and they are off—diving for cod or ploughing the seabed for clams. A swift exit seems more likely.
The encounter leaves me speechless. A great privilege, to share the space of these creatures’ home. Their faint wake stirs an ancient urge to give chase and find out where they are going. It’s quickly suppressed by the orange reflection of my puffer jacket. We are intruders. Better behave.
We don’t meet many walruses. Some of our guests who have been to Svalbard have seen them by the hundreds, but not us. In pictures they seem big and heavy. When you see them move in the water, it’s a different story—quick and agile, always with purpose. Their strong hind flippers propel them at impressive speeds.
The walrus is at home in these waters, always moving with the ice. In spring, they find floes large enough to give birth, and far enough from orca predation. Polar bears think twice before attacking, and in the water, even they give these large tusks a wide berth. Some lone males are known to be carnivorous, targeting smaller seals and even beluga. Normally, though, their diet consists of invertebrates like mussels and clams. They use their facial whiskers—not their tusks—to feel the bottom for hidden molluscs.
After centuries of Western exploitation, walrus populations are growing again. In medieval times, their ivory made it from the shores of Greenland to the shrines of Constantinople. The Dorset people—ancestors of the modern Inuit—relied on the walrus hunt not only for meat. The skin was used to cover the frames of umiaq boats, which in turn were used in the whale hunt. Today, the people of these coasts still use these traditional craft in their subsistence hunt for bowhead whales.
18 August 1826, seventy nautical miles east of Point Barrow: the Blossom’s dispatch boat turns back after nearly being crushed by heavy ice. On the same day, the second land expedition led by Franklin turned back toward the Mackenzie River, after reaching their furthest west. Only 150 nautical miles separated them from accomplishing their mission. Parry, who was supposed to be at the rendezvous as well, suffered a different fate in Prince Regent Sound—losing one of his ships, the Fury, in heavy ice on the bleak shores of Somerset Island. He limped out of Lancaster Sound, tail between his legs, at 04:30 on 9 August.
At the moment of writing, we are turning around Point Barrow—a true turning point. The ice in the Amundsen Gulf is still heavy, and the pack is rather close to the shores of northern Alaska. Still, we have committed ourselves to this course, in the expectation that things will change over the next few days. Tuktoyaktuk is still 500 nautical miles to the east. The seemingly featureless coastline of North Alaska will be the stage on which our adventure unfolds.
We embrace it.
All is well, Gijs
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