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Missing wildlife
Researchers hit the onboard laboratories as the Amundsen moves to another sampling station.
I didn't see it but a whale played chicken with the boat early this morning, moving out of the way only at the last minute. The ship is powering east towards Darnley Bay where'll she stop to take further samples.
Whilst we're in transit many of the 40 scientists on board head for the laboratories. The Amundsen has around a dozen labs, including a clean room where the contaminants team can measure mercury levels in the atmosphere, ice, snow and water, and a cold lab for working on ice cores. The cold lab is kept at a steady -23 degrees C so that the structure of the ice doesn't change.
In order to fit as much equipment in as possible, conditions are fairly cramped. There's a "no grumpiness" sign on the door of the labs at the back of the boat. When several researchers are in there at once and the boat is rolling, it's easy to bump into someone and ruin their sample. Apparently some people react to this better than others.
CJ Mundy of the University of Rimouski, who's currently chief scientist on board, tells me how this year the ice melt is around four weeks ahead of schedule. Earlier in the season, the researchers had been planning to set up an ice camp on the fast ice attached to the land but they found the ice was too thin. Last September, ice in the Arctic reached record-breakingly low levels so there is less multiyear ice around this year than ever before. And first-year ice is more easily broken up by the wind and waves than multiyear ice.
Although the Circumpolar Flaw Lead project is still in data collection mode - it will take another couple of years to analyse all the data - CJ was able to give me his initial impressions. He's been surprised how much primary production, from floating small plant cells and ice algae, the team has seen under the ice in shallow bays. There's been around ten times more under the ice than in the open water in the middle of the polynya - an ice-free area that appears across this bay during the spring.
The project is unique as it's sampled the polynya over twelve months. To do that, the boat had to overwinter here so that it was ready in position in the spring as the polynya appeared. And the Amundsen's moon pool means that the scientists have been able to take water samples while the ship moves from open water into land fast ice at the edge of the polynya. "This is probably the only ship that could do it," said Mundy.
While the Circumpolar Flaw Lead project is going well, I'm not having a good day for wildlife spotting. Having missed three whales at around 6 am, I also don't hear the call on the Amundsen's PA system that there is a polar bear on an ice floe we're passing. It was quite a way in the distance, I find out later, but was a big one. The bear was wading through melt pools, with one foot breaking right through the ice every now and then.
Whilst we're in transit many of the 40 scientists on board head for the laboratories. The Amundsen has around a dozen labs, including a clean room where the contaminants team can measure mercury levels in the atmosphere, ice, snow and water, and a cold lab for working on ice cores. The cold lab is kept at a steady -23 degrees C so that the structure of the ice doesn't change.
In order to fit as much equipment in as possible, conditions are fairly cramped. There's a "no grumpiness" sign on the door of the labs at the back of the boat. When several researchers are in there at once and the boat is rolling, it's easy to bump into someone and ruin their sample. Apparently some people react to this better than others.
CJ Mundy of the University of Rimouski, who's currently chief scientist on board, tells me how this year the ice melt is around four weeks ahead of schedule. Earlier in the season, the researchers had been planning to set up an ice camp on the fast ice attached to the land but they found the ice was too thin. Last September, ice in the Arctic reached record-breakingly low levels so there is less multiyear ice around this year than ever before. And first-year ice is more easily broken up by the wind and waves than multiyear ice.
Although the Circumpolar Flaw Lead project is still in data collection mode - it will take another couple of years to analyse all the data - CJ was able to give me his initial impressions. He's been surprised how much primary production, from floating small plant cells and ice algae, the team has seen under the ice in shallow bays. There's been around ten times more under the ice than in the open water in the middle of the polynya - an ice-free area that appears across this bay during the spring.
The project is unique as it's sampled the polynya over twelve months. To do that, the boat had to overwinter here so that it was ready in position in the spring as the polynya appeared. And the Amundsen's moon pool means that the scientists have been able to take water samples while the ship moves from open water into land fast ice at the edge of the polynya. "This is probably the only ship that could do it," said Mundy.
While the Circumpolar Flaw Lead project is going well, I'm not having a good day for wildlife spotting. Having missed three whales at around 6 am, I also don't hear the call on the Amundsen's PA system that there is a polar bear on an ice floe we're passing. It was quite a way in the distance, I find out later, but was a big one. The bear was wading through melt pools, with one foot breaking right through the ice every now and then.
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