“Few people get to visit Franz Josef Land in the Russian High Arctic – a mist-shrouded land of basalt islands covered in ice.
Sightings of polar bears were rare when I went, so this was a special moment when a young male bear was spotted on this massive glacier.
He had only a glaucous gull for company and, of course, my group in a Zodiac way below the ice cliff. It was presumed that the bear was feeding on eggs from the terns that were nesting on the ice-free rocks elsewhere.
Glacial melt was very evident, so this is a rather precious image, showing a bear in its receding natural environment.”
- Christopher Marsham, Retired