Far North Science

Tara has spent two winters in the ice

Let’s check in on one of the most interesting Far North expeditions now underway — a boat and crew trapped on purpose in the Arctic ice.

In the deep blackness of the polar night, the research schooner Tara and its crew of a dozen well-insulated scientists have been drifting for the past 15 months and now are veering mile by mile with Arctic ice toward the frigid waters of the North Atlantic Ocean.

With a rounded, flat hull, and reinforced structure, the ship embedded itself in polar ice in September of 2006. With scientists measuring ice thickness and taking observations, the boat traveled with floes about 5.7 miles per day during the first 12 months. In the end, Tara has moved about 870 miles across the Arctic — yet actually covered a more than of 2,100 miles due to the zigzag vagaries of the ice cap.

On May 28, the vessel slipped north of 88 North — within 100 miles of the geographic North Pole. Over the summer, the ship began drifting south faster than expected, and could reach open water within the next few weeks. (This emergence is a topic of keen interest to the crew.

“Despite all of the chatter, modeling, predictions and general banter, we just don’t know how things will pan out,” they wrote on Nov. 21. “That’s part of the magic of being stuck up here, to be living in a world that is not governed by bus timetables and the certitudes of what tomorrow will bring.”

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The ’swimming’ sea anemone
Photo: Stephen Jewett / SFOS

A team of science divers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks have discovered several new animal species in the Aleutian abyss, including a basketball-size anemone that can prowl the sea floor in search of prey.

The findings, part of a two-year scientific survey of Aleutian waters, focused on areas between Attu and Amila islands. At least three creatures may be new to human eyes, including two previously unknown species of anemonies.

Most sea anemonies attach themselves to the bottom or rock wall, and live out their days opening up and snatching food almost like carnivorous flowers. Not these puppies.

These species appear able to detach themselves and drift, basically “walking” or “swimming” across the seafloor as they feed, says Stephen Jewett, a professor of marine biology with the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, and the expedition’s dive leader.

Finding a brand new species of multi-celluar animal has become an extraordinary event, yet people know less about the submarine world in the basement of the world’s oceans than they do about the dark side of the moon.

“Since the underwater world of the Aleutian Islands has been studied so little, new species are being discovered, even today,” is how Jewett puts it.

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Rainbow over Coronation Gulf, Arctic Canada

Two British explorers traveling the Arctic Coast of Canada in Feathercraft folding kayaks and sled dog teams have reached the end of their journey in Kugluktuk, in the far reaches of Nunavut. But not before finding insight into the resilience of Inuit and Athabascan people in the face of climate change.

Northern people have always adapted, says Glenn Morris, in his final blog entry posted on Aug. 16.

Maybe it’s the people of the South who will struggle when the temperature rises above 100, the hurricanes blow and the droughts dry the fields.

“One point that was made to us and it’s the only time this point has been made to us — but it was very profound — and that is as a culture the aboriginal people — the Inuit, the Inuvialuit, the Gwich’in and everyone else are very, very adaptable people,” Morris wrote.

And it was put to us that a lot of these people here, the native people here, will adapt. They will take on the challenges of changing environment and climate change but in actual fact city dwellers and people who live down south will not be able to do that because they don’t intrinsically have the necessary skills of living in the environment and being able to adapt to it in simple terms.

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The Puma, or “plume mapper,” vehicle uses sonar,
lasers, and chemical sensors to search wide areas
near the ocean floor to detect the telltale temperature,
chemical, and turbidity signals from hydrothermal
vent plumes. Credit: Hanumant Singh/WHOI

The dispatch titles tell a compelling tale all their own: Life on the Edge and Echoes from the Deep. Or how about Puma is unveiled and unleashed?

A team of scientists and engineers on the Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition have now ventured hundreds of miles into the shattered summer pack aboard the icebreaker Oden on their mission to seek out new volcanic vents, map oozing submarine lava, and maybe greet and catalog some strange abyssal life.

So far, they’ve logged 24 different updates with glimpses of life aboard the ship and insight into the knotty problems that accompany launching robot subs to cruise beneath ice floes.

Even in an age where every snow-tramping adventurer with a biology degree and a snazzy diga-cam uploads dispatches to their website, this project sponsored by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has been exceptionally informative.

The slide shows have got narrative flow, with captions that further the story told by the image rather than simply repeating the obvious details in words.

Check out There and Back Again, posted on July 21:

Sometime after 7 a.m. Friday, about 3,700 meters, or 2.3 miles under the Arctic Ocean ice cap, the robotic vehicle Puma lost a thruster on a mission to search for plumes from hydrothermal vents on the seafloor. Scientists, engineers, and the crew of the icebreaker Oden all mobilized to try to get the hobbled vehicle back to the surface, to guide Puma to a rendezvous with Oden in the shifting ice pack, and to make a hole in the densely packed ice for Puma to surface safely.

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Two British explorers traveling the Arctic Coast of Canada in Feathercraft folding kayaks have hit a “wall of ice” blocking their route through the famed Northwest Passage.

In the first stage of a 3,000-mile kayak and dog-sled Arctic Voice expedition to visit Inuit villages and create links to schools in England, Glenn Morris and Stephen Doughty were forced to turn back from severe floes and return to the village of Tuktoyaktuk on July 11.

“It was like a massive maze,” Glenn wrote in the most recent dispatch. “We started going from straight forwards to sideways to backwards and then we ended up realising that there were these huge lumps of pack ice were closing around us. …”

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Alain Hubert and Dixie Dansercoer
traversed the Arctic

Two Belgium explorers finally reached Greenland, completing one of the most difficult polar journeys of recent decades and documenting the disintegrating ice cap of the Far North.

From the Arctic Arc site:

“Alain Hubert and Dixie Dansercoer have just accomplished a major first in the history of the world.

The journey across the Arctic from Siberia to Greenland had never been done until now. The conditions under which this adventure was undertaken — never able to rest and braving the obvious harsh conditions in the Arctic — make this athletic feat all the more extraordinary and places it amongst the most prominent achievements in the history of the poles.”

The two men skied and trudged from Siberia to the North Pole, then veered south and finally pitched their tent in Greenland snow on June 14. They spent 106 days on the drifting floes, and trav