Day 10 – Crocker Bay, Devon Island August 31, 2026
It was a great plan while it lasted but this morning’s thick fog meant the bear team couldn’t see far enough (1 kilometer) to ensure that no polar bears would be near by. It looks terrible on TripAdvisor for guests to be eaten by bears, so no landing.
But we were able to go out in the zodiacs and get an up-close view of the glacier and see some seals poke their noses up out of the water to see what all the commotion was about. Judy and I didn’t get to go out until 5:15 PM by which time the mist had thickened a bit and a light mist was falling. Temps were 40ish and so it was a bit cold. Our zodiac driver turned out to be the chief scientist, from Devon, England, and so had some affinity for Devon Island as well as lots of good knowledge. She’d been in the lab all day and relieved a teammate so she could go out boating and get some fresh air.
Devon Island is the largest uninhabited island in the world. Fifty two Inuit communities from Baffin Island were forcibly moved and consolidated to Dundas Harbor on Devon Island in 1934. That proved a disaster due to strong winds and cold weather at that location. The Inuit moved voluntarily. The last settlers left Devon Island in the 1950s.
One of our cultural ambassadors on board asked us to treat the island with great respect. The forced resettlement meant that many families lost track of their loved ones. She, in particular, doesn’t know where her grandmother is buried. “Treat everything you see with care; it may be my grandmother’s.”
The glacier we saw was a outflow of the Devon Icecap that occupies about one-half of the island. Our guide says its actually receding rather than moving outward toward the bay.
Parts of Devon Island are said to resemble conditions on Mars. NASA has used the area as a test site for equipment and techniques. Conspiracy theorists say the terrain is used by the government to fool us into thinking we’ve been to Mars or that Mars even exists.
Tomorrow, we move to Beechey Island, the place where members of the ill-fated John Franklin expedition of 1854 are buried. We’ll go ashore and check it out.
