ICE

Current Position:

N 70°24' W 133°42'

Landed in Sachs Harbour midday on Wednesday and by the air temperate you knew you had arrived. The town itself was so small at first I didn't even notice it was there. Peering over from the airport, which is nothing more than a dirt strip, you can see around a hundred houses huddled next to the water. The town, which has to be one of the most isolated places to live, looks like it's dwindling; apparently teenagers frequently leave home after school and move to the city: Inuvik.

After surviving the Air Tindi charter flight up here I was ready to be on the ship. The Air Tindi special is a double propeller plane circa 1960.  A throwback to the days when you could only travel a few hours before landing to refuel (our fuel stop was Kugluktuk) and the press for steward'ess' button was just that: a lady in a dress carrying a tray. The helicopter flight was short but sweet. Although it was a little unnerving that the highly paid, important company employed personnel in the seat next to me, who just went through a graphic safety briefing on how they will exit the helicopter in the event of a crash, is wearing a survival suit. No worries, grad students are easily replaceable!

We left Sachs Harbour on a course out to the southern Beaufort Sea which is where most of the sampling on this leg of the research cruise will take place. The area is of great importance to Imperial Oil and BP (whose employees all left the ship mysteriously 8 days early so they wont be present on this leg). They are searching the seabed for a deep water drilling site planned for 2015, that is, if they find the oil. The Amundsen usually has a mix of people, those looking for oil and those studying nature to provide evidence against drilling.

There is a huge variety of science personnel on board conducting research in cetacean monitoring, mercury contamination, zooplankton sampling, benthic box cores and trawls for collection and identification (what I am working on) and CTD and mooring deployment on the physical side. There is also multibeam sonar mapping the sea floor in the area, which means a 24/7 ping, ping, ping sound which cannot be heard everywhere on the ship but seems to be centred on my cabin.

Between us and the Beaufort was an expansive stretch of sea ice. Upon hearing the hull crushing sounds of breaking ice, I hopped out of bed and caught a glimpse of a small ice burg floating by my window. On deck I went photo crazy, trying to capture the beauty of the bright night sky, perfectly calm sea and brilliant blue ice. No polar bears sited yet, but the sea itself is breathtaking enough.