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http://eyeonthearctic.rcinet.ca/en/news/canada/48-special-reports/377-sailing-the-northwest-passage-people-on-board-the-louis-s-st-laurent
Sailing the Northwest Passage: People on Board the Louis S. St. Laurent
WEDNESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2010 12:44
As Prime Minister Stephen Harper tours the Far North this week, talking about Canada's plans for the Arctic, the country's icebreakers are already hard at work in the Arctic, delivering supplies to isolated communities and transporting scientists to remote locations.
Capt. Marc Rothwell has sailed with the Canadian Coast Guard for 31 years and is noticing some big changes this summer in the Northwest Passage.
Erin Clark is an ice specialist with Environment Canada's Ice Services who shipped out on board the Louis St. Laurent this summer.
Steve MacLean, the former astronaut, is president of the Canadian Space Agency and he was on the Louis St. Laurent to learn about the type of research being undertaken and how the agency might be able to help it.
Oceanographer Jane Eert is with the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C.
Sara Wong is a sea bird observer with the Canadian Wildlife Service and her job onboard the Louis St. Laurent is to record the abundance and distribution of Arctic sea birds.
This week, six of the seven Canadian Coast Guard's icebreakers are in the Arctic, including the Louis S. St. Laurent.
Yellowknife-based photojournalist Kirsten Murphy sailed more than 3,000 nautical miles through the Northwest Passage aboard the Louis this summer. This is a snapshot of the people she met on board.
The captain
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| Marc Rothwell, captain of the icebreaker Louis St. Laurent, overlooks the first-year ice in Lancaster Sound, the gateway to the Northwest Passage. (Kirsten Murphy/CBC) |
"I was struck by how easily and quickly we made it through," he says. "We did not encounter the resistance and heavy ice of years past.
"During our pre-Arctic briefings we were told by Environment Canada's Ice Services specialists that much of the Arctic was 4 C to 8 C warmer in the winter and to expect the ice to be thinner than normal," which turned out to be the case.
"Not once did we have to put all five engines on. Two years ago in the same area, it was a couple of weeks earlier but we had five main engines — all the horsepower the Louis St. Laurent could muster — and she averaged about two to three knots for about five days. So, quite a difference this time."
The ice expert
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| Erin Clark, left, with first mate Gerard Chafe and a cadet as they plot a course through the Northwest Passage. (Kirsten Murphy/CBC) |
"I provide the captain with weather and ice information," Clark says.
"I'm doing visual ice observations from the bridge and the helicopter and ice reconnaissance flights. I'm also using satellite imagery to get a better idea of a larger area interims of ice conditions."
Melting sea ice, which is opening the passage to more shipping and exploration, is a big issue in the North for a number of reasons. One of them is that sea ice is the primary platform for polar bears to hunt seals.
Clark's work may benefit from better satellite imagery and the expertise of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), which also had people aboard the Louis St. Laurent this summer.
The astronaut
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| Former astronaut Steve MacLean launches one of several dozen glass bottles in Coronation Gulf as part of DFO's Drift Bottle Project. The project looks at surface ocean currents. (Kirsten Murphy/CBC) |
The federal space agency currently has two satellites in orbit, with more planned over the next few years, and MacLean says: "It is essential that we improve the bandwidth to all our Canadian ships, whether it is Coast Guard, marine or military."
"What we are proposing is a polar communications satellite that will give 24-hour, seven day a week coverage and the same bandwidth data as we enjoy down South. It is critical to developing the North."
The researcher
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| Oceanographer Jane Eert prepares to lower the rosette, with its 24 cannisters, from the Louis St. Laurent into the water. (Kirsten Murphy/CBC) |
She is also the senior scientist of Canada's Three Oceans (C30), a federal project looking at the salinity, oxygen and nutrient content of water flowing from the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait and into the Arctic.
Samples are also being taken of water from the Atlantic Ocean that flows into the Beaufort Sea from the Russian Arctic.
Eert and technician Mike Dempsey collect these samples by lowering a rosette of 24 cannisters into the ocean and trapping water as specific depths. The rosette can go as deep as four kilometres but on this trip the maximum depth was 1,000 metres.
"From the ship the ice looks small and ice-cubish, but when you see it next to the rosette you realize these chunks are huge and they are heavy and the wire only has a certain amount of strength," she says.
"It is really designed to lift up a rosette that weighs 11,000 pounds. So when you start adding a ton and a half of ice moving away from the ship that has caught the wire with it, the potential is you will break the wire and lose the rosette."
By the end of the two-week trip, 2,500 water samples are packaged and destined for the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sydney, where Eert and Dempsey work.
This type of baseline data that will help track important temperature changes and invasive species in the Arctic.
"Because ice forms on the surface of the southern Bering Sea, and the Bering Sea is so shallow, the coldness there actually goes down to the sea floor and it basically makes a wall of cold water between the Pacific and Arctic Ocean," Eert points out.
"Things that live on the Pacific Coast, like salmon from B.C. and Alaska, can't get through because the water is too cold for them. But if, for some reason, ice formation changes in the surface of the Bering Sea — and, as a result, the cold pool does not form — the chances are the salmon might head north and come into the Arctic."
The birder
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| Sara Wong cracks a smile after a wooden bird replica is dropped in front of her on the bridge. (Kirsten Murphy/CBC) |
The most commonly sighted birds included dovekies, thick-billed murres, northern fulmars, black wake kittiwakes and the endangered ivory gull.
"We know a lot about birds at the colonies, but we don't know a huge amount about what the birds are doing at sea outside of the colonies," she says.
"That's important because it will give us an idea of important feeding areas and hot spots and it's not just sea birds but marine mammals and other things."
When asked how she's ensuring she doesn't count the same bird twice, Wong says, "There are some species that will follow the ship and generally what I do there is I make an hourly estimate of how many are following, and then I ignore them for the rest of the time.
"So you'll get an idea of their range but it would be a lot harder to get an estimate and density of the birds."
The crew
While the researchers are hard at work, a crew of 46 keeps the CCGS Louis St. Laurent safe and on course.
Chief mate Catherine Lacombe, 33, grew up around water on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec.
She always dreamed of sailing with the Canadian Coast Guard. But that dream nearly died when she was seriously injured in a bike accident at the age of 17.
"I could not pass the Coast Guard College's medical exam, but I'm not a person to sit around and wait. So I went on to become an agriculture counsellor. By the time I graduated from that program, my physical condition improved and I passed the medicals to go to sea," she says.
Eugene Jones of New Glasgow, N.S., is the Louis St. Laurent's carpenter, an unusual distinction, perhaps, on a ship made mostly of metal.
But, as he points out, "It's an old ship. We have about 87 cabins. The beds, the dressers and the door frames are wood. Plus you have three common areas, three lounges that are all wood."
Cheryl Benger of St. John's, N.L., is the ship's second cook.
"The benefits of working with the Coast Guard is you get to see a lot of different areas, from the Grand Banks to Kugluktuk. And the ships are very well maintained which is a positive thing when you are going to sea."
Benger says that "when we're going through the heavy ice, I sleep like a baby. And even if it is not the heavy ice, there is still a gentle sway. It is like being rocked to sleep every night."
Jim Purdy, the ship's logistics officer, has been with the Canadian Coast Guard for about 33 years. He has been on 18 trips to the Arctic.
Purdy was on the Louis St. Laurent in 1994 when she became the first Canadian icebreaker to circumnavigate North America and during a stopover at the North Pole, he took on an unofficial role as wedding planner for two scientists who were on board at the time.
"That was the only wedding," he says. But he notes that "We had a young fellow from St. John's, a very, very, bright young engineer who passed away from cancer at an early age, in his late 20s.
"His request was to have his ashes scattered in the Arctic. So one cold November day — and I mean cold — we headed out past Little Cornwallis Island and we scattered them from the flight deck. There was a lot of moisture in people's eyes and it wasn't from the wind."
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