It takes a crew to mount an expedition

Posted by Chris Debicki, expedition leader

Christopher Debicki, expedition leader, and Kristin Westdal, marine biologist and expedition research coordinator.

We will have time to post more on the just-finished expedition and assess the scientific data after we get some sleep. For now we will let the pictures speak for themselves and with your indulgence, thank a few folks.

No expedition of this complexity can occur without a host of people who have been unrecognized or under-recognized. Our month at sea was a massive collective effort, both aboard Arctic Endeavour and on terra firma in Greenland, Canada and the USA. 

Thanks first and foremost go to our Oceans North team, especially to our home base of Jeremy, David, Ruth, Patty, John, Alaina and Genevieve. Thanks also to support from Trevor, Gary, Louie and Terry. And of course to Scott, for his leadership and for making this whole project a reality.

Thanks also to the great people from all kinds of places who provided us advice, resources and encouragement, all of which were frequently tapped. Thanks to Pierre in Winnipeg for his sage counsel and support. Big shout out to Terry and Harry for crewing on the Newfoundland-Greenland crossing. Mammoth props to Matt for this too, and more. To Mads for Qeqertarsuaq generosity, and to David and Martin of Nussuaq for protecting us from ourselves aboard ice floes in Baffin Bay. 

Thanks to the Iqaluit crew, for holding the fort and for keeping it real.

Thanks to those I’ve missed, both for the help and for forgiving the omission.

And to the crew of the Arctic Endeavor, for putting up with me and a crazy impossible dream. To Bowen for injecting a new generation of cool. To Bob for elevating the whole game. Outi for Outi. Knut for safe passage. Hans Martin for humour. To Kristin for blood, sweat and tears, for dedication and for thriving in a tough environment. To Alex for quiet heroism. And to Sandy for late heroism.

Thank you bearded seal, for filling the sea with your song (when no one else was there for us).

Thank you bowhead, for showing up when we needed you.

Thank you narwhal, for finishing a migration that we could not.

Thank you polar bears, for ignoring us.

Thank you netsik, for sustaining us.

Thank you ocean, for sustaining us all.

Narwhal at last

Posted by Chris Debicki, expedition leader

Even before the drone of the helicopter faded away, the noise coming from the floe edge was unmistakable. Whales. Narwhal. A cacophony of heaves, sighs, clicks, snorts and trills.  

On Sandy’s direction, we placed what would be our last camp a couple hundred metres from the open water. Even without binoculars, we could see polar bears on both sides. They were full from gorging, Sandy reassured us.

Kristin, Alex and I could hardly contain ourselves. We had been following the narwhal migration for a month, and yet until now the whales had been ghosts on a horizon. Excited, we made for the floe edge even before we made camp.

Waves gently lapped against the floe edge’s icy shore. The salty ice undulated, and before us a sight I will never forget—narwhal in numbers that defied any easy estimate. No doubt, there were hundreds of narwhal swimming in pods of two to six, often abreast. There were calves glued to mothers and groups of males with tusks of all sizes, some swimming parallel with the ice edge, some floating. Other whales were plunging into and under the ice, the great depths of their dives evident in their heaving breaths.

Hours elapsed. Kristin focused on recording the narwhal vocalizations for our acoustic science studies. Sandy pointed out the field techniques for identifying whales by age and gender. Alex basked in the joy of making it home just in time to camp on his beloved floe edge. 

Sandy Qaunaq, Pond Inlet hunter and mechanic.

Finally, utterly spent, we retired to our tent as a midnight breeze broke the stillness. We talked of our teammates aboard Arctic Endeavour, and wished that they were sharing this day with us. 

Alex, Sandy and I alternated on bear watch throughout the night. But for the odd curious cub (easily dissuaded), our last night together at sea was without interruption until 10 a.m. the next day, when the unmistakable sound of helicopter blades cut through the morning fog. 

Narwhal tusks piercing the sky.

Photos: Chris Debicki

Leaving the Arctic Endeavour behind in Greenland

Posted by Chris Debicki, expedition leader

Wednesday, July 6

For an hour and a half, the flight from Upernavik was a silent one. The drone of the engines didn’t interfere with conversation — no one on the team was talking. 

Instead, our heads were at the windows, looking over Baffin Bay unfolding below. We soon saw the ice that had stopped the Arctic Endeavour in its tracks. The sight from above was oddly familiar: After looking at so much satellite imagery of this very same place, I realized that my eyes had completed our voyage on countless occasions in the last 30 days.

The realization quickly faded when the highlands of East Baffin and Bylot Island appeared on the horizon. To the north, Lancaster Sound emerged as an ice-free open sea. To the east, Eclipse Sound was holding onto its land-fast ice.

To our relief, Pond Inlet still had its floe edge and thus a platform for us to camp and work. Better yet, even at turbo-prop speed several hundred feet above sea level, we could see, unmistakably, that whales were converging at the ice edge. Spontaneous cheers erupted in the cabin. Another great sight: We flew over hunters camped on that edge. Alex managed to make out his dad’s camp.

Upon arrival in Pond Inlet, our tentative plan was to head for the floe edge as soon as we had an update from returning hunters. We met up with Sandy Qaunaq, an experienced mechanic and hunter and a very close friend of Alex’s. When I was planning this expedition, I very much wanted Sandy to join us. Like Alex, Sandy is one of those Nunavut renaissance guys; he takes his Blackberry with him on hunting trips (he is apparently prolific and hilarious on Facebook), but also relies on traditional skills that haven’t been bested.   

Waiting for word from the floe edge, we filled Sandy in on our voyage. Finally, at 3 a.m., we received news that the last hunters were returning from the floe edge, Alex’s dad and uncles amongst them. We rushed out to help.

It had obviously been a tough slog home. In the span of a few hours, the sea ice around town had receded dramatically. We spent the next two or three hours ferrying snowmobiles (“machines,” as they are called), qamutiqs (sleds full of supplies that are pulled behind the machines) and gear from the ice to shore. Chosen both because of his slight frame and cool nerves (he really is fearless), Sandy drove the largest snowmobile to shore, crossing several hundred metres of open water in a feat that appeared to defy gravity.

By the time we’d finished ferrying gear safely ashore, Alex and Sandy had the information we needed. It was advice we didn’t want to hear, but could not ignore: Travel by ice to the floe edge was no longer an option. What we didn’t know then was that 12 hours later, we’d be flying in a small helicopter to that same floe edge.

Photos: Trevor Taylor

Evaluating a small boat Arctic science expedition

Posted by: Chris Debicki, expedition leader

As we travel to Upernavik, our last destination aboard the Arctic Endeavour, we are starting to reflect on our project. If it’s any indication, our spirits are high. The sun-splattered bergs and glistening snow peaks are just as beautiful today as they were a month ago.

It will take us a few weeks to fully evaluate how well our small boat science expedition worked in the Arctic. But at this point, I am convinced that it has provided a useful platform for doing scientific studies in this environment. A small boat offers scientists a low-cost option for ocean research. 

We owe a lot of credit to the competence and dedication of the Newfoundland team that helped us turn a fishing vessel into a viable research platform. We had little time to prepare the boat and I called in many favours. The Arctic Endeavour would not have left the dock on time without help from my brother, a professional sailor, and my stepfather, an engineer.

As this ice season proved, there are limitations to small boat operations in these ice-clogged waters. Icebreakers remain the only workable platform when it comes to penetrating heavy ice. By necessity, we’ve been operating in the margins, mostly avoiding ice of densities of 60 percent or greater.   

Testing the ice.

Based on ice data, we determined that we would have been able to complete the route across the North Water Polynya and into Lancaster Sound during eight out of the last 10 years — and might have made it in 2004, but not 2005. The odds of a successful crossing at this time of year in the two previous decades were reduced but still good even with significantly more ice cover.

What we knew going in — and what became clear as we stared into the vast wall of consolidated pack ice in Baffin Bay and Melville Bay — was that information about average and median ice extent and ice concentration is only moderately useful. What can be counted on in the Arctic is variability. The extremes are in many ways the real norm. And it is on those extreme conditions that good plans must rest.

Fortunately, we created a scientific plan that kept us very busy, even when ice blocked our expected route. Thanks to the extra time we’ve had off Greenland, we’ve completed hours of recordings of dozens of bowhead during a stage in their migration that has not been previously captured. 

We return with a series of acoustic snapshots of whales communicating with one another as they make their great journey across Baffin Bay. Many of these whales will continue through Lancaster Sound into Nunavut waters, a region that Inuit are working to protect by establishing a national marine conservation area. With this new data, Outi and other marine biologists will piece together a more complete picture of bowhead communication and movement.

Unfortunately, ice conditions meant that some of our research projects could not be completed this season. Stubborn sea ice forced us ashore on several occasions.  Ironically, these unexpected stops in villages became perhaps the highlight of the voyage as we sought advice and assistance from the Greenlandic people who know these waters the best.

Our local guide looking for signs of whales.

Any small boat expedition operating in heavy sea ice must be prepared to drastically modify plans on short notice. Kristin worked hard to adapt our scientific programme to the whims of a half-frozen ocean that didn’t care about our human machinations. 

It is critical that a team embark on a project like this with the knowledge that uncertainty will rule. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Living in very close quarters for extended periods, our crew inevitably brought different personal and professional goals. Some goals couldn’t be achieved. Some were accomplished at the expense of others. Fortunately, the expectations of this team were calibrated to accommodate this.  

Once we arrive in Upernavik, Kristin, Alex and I will be flying to Pond Inlet. That’s Alex’s home community and sits on the northern coast of Baffin Bay near Lancaster Sound. Stay tuned.

Photo credit: Arcadia 

All other photos: Oceans North Canada 

A wealth of eider ducks

Posted by: Kristin Westdal, marine biologist

We noticed a steady increase in the number of eider ducks as we traveled north up the Greenland coast. As we made our way by small boat into pack ice off the coast of Nuussuaq, we passed Edderfugleøer, a tiny smattering of islands thirty kilometres offshore. These windswept granite humps live up to their name, supporting a large eider colony in the summer. The eider in the photo is the Common Eider, Somateria mollissima, known to nest in colonies along the coast in the circumpolar north.

This male still sports winter plumage: black and white with an olive green colouration on the back of the neck. Male plumage is dark brown in summer. The female has more understated brown and black colouration all year. The Common Eider is the largest duck in North America and the most numerous and widespread of the seven subspecies of eiders worldwide. Locals tell us that eiders in the region have started nesting and eggs have been seen. One of the local hunters, David, who was our guide when we camped offshore in the ice pointed out birds that were ready to lay their eggs based on their flight patterns and laboured take-off.

Eiders lay eggs once a year between June and September and a typical nest will contain two to seven eggs. The females not only sit on their eggs to incubate them but line their nest with down plucked from their own bodies, adding new meaning to the phrase ‘giving of one’s self’! They typically nest on islands or coastline. Nesting habitat varies from open areas or in grasses and weeds to under shrubs and spruce trees.

About 75 percent of their diet is mollusks, the rest being a variety of crustaceans. Eiders dive to depths of 20 metres to feed on mollusks and crustaceans including mussels, clams, scallops and urchins.

A duck pair on ice. Photo credits: Oceans North Canada