This was the first time I saw a wild cetacean! It happened in the summer of 2008, in SW Spitsbergen, when I was a PhD candidate involved in a tundra study. My colleague and I were busy with fieldwork on a coastal plain, when suddenly he pointed to the sea, and said anxiously “Look, polar bears!” We had met a polar bear a couple of days before, and it was our first fieldwork season in the Arctic, so we felt quite uneasy while in the open…

However, it occurred that these “polar bears” had a rather not-so-beary look. So, instead of backing away from the scene, we walked closer to the shore, climbed a little hillock and saw four or five belugas in very shallow water. The belugas seemed like playing or just resting and we spent some minutes admiring the gorgeous white whales:)

-Maja