Lessons of the Arctic

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO

A victim of cabin fever, freelance journalist George Tombs emulates Patrick McGoohan's character in the classic television series, The Prisoner.

OTTAWA – There was barely time for a visit to the bar Thursday before a Bandierante aircraft from Kenn Borek Air arrived on the ice airstrip having dodging the freezing rain which had scrubbed an earlier flight. A little more than 24 hours later, Air Canada delivered me back here.

More reflection on the experience will no doubt come with time. But here are 10 valuable lessons I learned during three weeks aboard the Canadian Coast Guard’s icebreaker Amundsen:

1. It’s not a good idea to use the last dregs in a helium cylinder to inflate a weather balloon. They’re likely diluted with nitrogen and the radiosonde won’t ascend.

2. Drinking coffee before a long helicopter flight is a really, really bad idea. Unless there’s an empty water bottle.

3. Muskox meat is available free at Sachs Harbour on Banks Island¸ providing you have some way to take it away. The muskox are killed for qiviut, the unshrinkable underwool that’s eight times warmer than sheep’s wool and which sells for high enough prices to recoup shipping costs. The meat doesn’t.

4. Cabin fever is a real danger. The photograph shows journalist and Conrad Black biographer George Tombs shouting “I am not a number” as he unsuccessfully tries to escape from the airport at Sachs Harbour. Burlap bags of qiviut can be glimpsed behind to his right.

5. The afternoon crew break at three o’clock is when fresh-backed cookies appear  in the Amundsen cafeteria. The chocolate chip are better than anything in Toronto at any price. Trust me on this. 

6. The best Arctic clothing and gear is made in Norway, except for boots where Canada excels. The really neat Norwegian item are the armoured gloves used by the fishery workers, which were great when hauling rope and grasping frigid metal parts out on the ice floes here

7. The pilots and planes of Kenn Borek Air deserve their stellar reputation for flying in dicey conditions at both ends of the Earth.

8. Running boards are a wonderful idea that should be reintroduced. Try getting on or off a snowmobile with an artificial hip and Baffin boots and you’ll discover how useful that step-up is.

9. Woman truly get the chance to show their mettle in the Canadian Coast Guard, from “matelots” (seamen) through logistics officers up to captain. It’s a much better career choice for a young woman than the Canadian merchant marine. You’ll have to trust me on this as well. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble.

10. Home is best.   

Make that a double

STILL ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN—“The flight from Inuvik has been cancelled. All those people who were scheduled to leave will still have to vacate their rooms. Please see me about finding some place to sleep.”

That was the unwelcome inaugural announcement by Dave Barber, the new chief scientist on the Amundsen research icebreaker.

The ever-efficient Amundsen office staff did find me — and the half-dozen others also marooned here — a place to lay our heads for the night.

But it could be more than one night. The forecast is for the poor weather to continue, after three weeks of nothing but sunny skies.

Such delays are par for the course in the Arctic. As well, we were a day late getting here three weeks ago because of mechanical problems with the charter flight that brought a crew change and a new team of scientists to Inuvik.

So the Arctic is simply getting that day back. Luckily it’s bar night on the Amundsen, and I believe new stock arrived on one of the two charter flights that did make it in earlier today.

 

A steady hand on the wheel

AT THE HELM CCGS AMUNDSEN—For 20 exhilarating and anxious minutes yesterday, I got to steer a 6,000-tonne icebreaker knifing through the Arctic ice floes.

Photo by Amundsen captain Lise Marchand

Peter at wheel -- Star science reporter Peter Calamai stares ahead intently as he tries to steer the icebreaker Amundsen on a steady course.

Like most things that you watch experts do, it was nowhere as easy as it looks.

The anxiety was mostly on my part. The Amundsen’s captain Lise Marchand, who was taking my photograph, remained her usual placid and reassuring self.

The real helmsman on that watch, Vincent Gagnon, stood beside for a few moments to emphasize some of the trickier points of the job but soon wandered off.

Then it was an aging reporter alone against the hostile frozen Arctic Ocean.

(So long as you forget about the captain, quartermaster and another bridge officer, not to mention Vincent and his replacement Eve Guilbault who later took back the wheel.)

For anyone who knew what they were doing, this would have been a cakewalk. The Amundsen was retracing a path it has broken earlier in the day through relatively thin ice. We were making a mere 2.6 knots (“slow ahead”) to give scientists and crew time to clean up from a messy coring of bottom sediments. No one wanted that mud tracked back to our home berth in the ice. There was very little wind.

All the amateur helmsman had to do was keep the Amundsen centred in the already broken track. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

Remember the old joke about stopping the Queen Elizabeth II liner? Start before you know you have to.

Well it’s true with a 98-metre-long vessel as well, even one that’s just puttering along well below the potential top speed.. When you turn the wheel everything happens in slow motion.

PHOTO BY AMUNDSEN CAPTAIN LISE MARCHAND

Vincent Gagnon, one of the Amundsen's real helmsman, keeps his gaze on the ice while Star science reporter Peter Calamai looks down to check the ship's bearing on an engraved brass scale on the wheel.

The problem is that it keeps on working. I can’t remember whether the correct term is understeer or oversteer but you crank the wheel 20 degrees to port and the bow of the ship just keeps going straight ahead. Then, slowly the whole mass starts to swing left. Before you realize it, however, you’ve pointed one of the Canadian Coast Guard’s Class Three icebreakers right into an endless vista of unbroken ice. Maybe not that thick ice, but an awful lot of it.

Crank back frantically to starboard and wait anxiously for the response. Again, in slow motion, the bow swings back towards straight ahead … and then keeps on swinging, so now the ship is crunching along the right-hand margin of the path cleared that morning.

So for the first 10  minutes or so, the Amundsen slalomed its way south of Banks Island in the Western Arctic. If any of the other crew or scientists not on the bridge noticed, they were kind enough not to say anything.

Once the vessel was going more or less in a straight line, I got cocky and began chatting about photographic gear with Captain Marchand who, like me, shoots with a Nikon D200 single lens reflex camera.

The ice floes had other ideas. Something nudged the side of the ship (or maybe one propeller whacked a frozen chunk) and suddenly we were doing a marine imitation of a dog walking, at a five-degree angle off the perpendicular.

I’m fairly sure of that statistic because the person at the helm faces a panorama of electronic information displays, at least three showing the ship’s bearing. That bearing is also engraved on brass circles down at the centre of the wheel. Strangely I found myself looking more at that old-fashioned display more often than the modern LED readouts.

After 20 minutes I asked Eve Guilbault to please take over the task. Already my shoulders complained about keeping them tensed and my eyes ached.

Real Coast Guard wheelpersons may have to keep their concentration at a peak for an entire four-hour watch and often operate in the foulest weather. Whatever they’re paid, they earn every penny. And more.

 

Left on an ice floe with guns and chicken-baited traps

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO

Stig Falk-Petersen, of the Norwegian Polar Institute, finds his chicken bait didn't lure any tiny amphipods to a trap lowered through the ice.

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN – Here are the names of the four men and two women left behind today on the ice south of Banks Island: Luc Michaud and Pascal Massot, both of Laval University; Stig Falk-Petersen of the Norwegian Polar Institute; crewman Philippe Guillot; Andrea Rossnagel and Alexis Burt, both of the University of Manitoba. The parka-clad party rapidly dwindled to invisibility as this Coast Guard icebreaker shrugged free of its most recent frozen parking spot and sped west.

Nobody waved goodbye.

That’s because this isn’t some deep-freeze version of marooning Captain Jack Sparrow in the film Pirates of the Caribbean. The plan is for the sextet to get back on the ship when the Amundsen returns to its starting point this evening.

The scientists on board for the current leg of the 10-month climate-change expedition asked the Coast Guard to shift the ship several kilometres to the west so they weren’t fouling their own nest by plunging a steel grab bucket into the ocean floor about 200 metres below.

At the same time, other researchers were getting anxious because several days of trawling through holes in the thick floe had netted little of consequence. So the sextet stayed behind to continue that heavy-duty ice fishing.

They have radios, food, water, snowmobiles, a Bombardier snow-grooming machine with a large heated cab and two tents erected earlier on the ice for shelter if the ship had to be evacuated.

The shore party (floe party?) also boasts a higher ratio of Canadian-certified gun-handlers than most groups who venture onto the ice from the Amundsen. Three of the six are qualified to try to bring down a polar bear with a 12-gauge shotgun or .308 calibre rifle.

Despite such assurances, right now with a wind gusting between 10 and 15 knots it feels like minus 35 C out on the ice.

Stig won’t mind. Stig is my cabin mate. He’s a tall, trim, 58-year-old marine biologist from Norway but he leaves here garbed in multiple layers and looking like a dark version of the Michelin tire man.

“I don’t like to be cold and on the ice it is always cold unless you dress right,” he  explains.

Stig is a senior scientist with the venerable Norwegian Polar Institute which began life in 1928. His curriculum vitae (.pdf) runs for 25 pages. He could sit back and let more junior researchers do the grunt work.

Yet Stig is forever finding reasons to go out on the ice even though he doesn’t have to. Today’s fishing party is a case in point.

Stig’s research centres on tiny, tiny critters known as amphipods which he’s been trying unsuccessfully to lure into ultra-fine mesh traps baited with chicken (I am NOT making this up.) The nets used by the ice-fishing party have holes far too large to catch any amphipods.

Yet Doctor of Philosophy Falk-Petersen volunteered to spend at least nine hours in strenuous physical labour on the frigid floe with the nearest real comfort – this ship -- 3.6 nautical miles away, I’ll report back later after everyone is safely back on board.

UPDATE: After 11 hours on the ice, our sextet is safely back on board the Amundsen, triumphant in netting the first Arctic cod larvae of the season. A ruddy-faced Stig says it was cold but a "wonderful day."

The Amundsen in words and pictures

Here's an audio slideshow that gives an overview of the mission, life aboard the Amundsen and the work that his being done aboard the ship. You can watch a larger version here.

Scientists disentangle expensive gear

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO

Heidelberg researcher Denis Poehler gets an atmospheric gas detector ready for moving day on the Amundsen.

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN – Denis Poehler is happy. The German researcher is heading back to the University of Heidelberg (via a Vancouver stop-over) and he’s shipping DOAS back too.

DOAS stands for Differential Optical Absorption Spectroscopy, a technique for measuring atmospheric gases at levels as low as tenths of parts per billion. Heidelberg boasts the world’s most sensitive long-path DOAS apparatus, which has been churning away for weeks from an upper level of this icebreaker.

More importantly, Denis is taking valuable data home as well, those ultra-precise measurements of the atmospheric levels of ozone, bromine oxide and – just possibly – iodine oxide as well. These may reveal just what causes the concentrations of ground-level ozone to plunge precipitously during the spring here.

“The quality of the data exceeded my expectations,” Denis confided this afternoon as he was packing DOAS up for moving day Thursday.

The German PhD student isn’t alone. Seven other researchers (and three journalists) are scheduled to leave the icebreaker Thursday. It’s called a mid-leg change because it falls half-way through one of the six-week legs into which this 10-month expedition is divided.

A better name might be the “has-anyone-seen” change.

The laboratories in research institutions on land have long been communal affairs, with researchers borrowing equipment and reagents from the next bench or the lab down the hall. This spirit operates even more in a floating research set-up, because there isn’t a central store to call on and courier delivery isn’t really an option.

But that means everything has to find its way back to the original owner when a charter aircraft is due to land on the ice in less than two days time. Often one of the biggest hassles here is finding the original packing cases, which have been squirreled away in the most unlikely parts of the ship.

(Although it’s not widely recognized, even among the British scientists on board, the Amundsen is actually the latest manifestation of the TARDIS, the time-travelling machine of Dr. Who which is much larger inside than out.)

Another danger of moving days is that vital apparatus which should stay on the Amundsen mistakenly gets packed up and shipped off. That’s what happened to a minicomputer which was supposed to automatically adjust a sophisticated mercury detector out on the ice.

For now the researcher is coping by making regular excursions to manually flip switches. But you can bet that one pair of hands will be eagerly pawing through the boxes when they’re unloaded from the aircraft Thursday.

Charging polar bear would gauge your nerve

ALONGSIDE CCGS AMUNDSEN—Until today I had fired two kinds of firearms in my life — a .22 caliber rifle (groundhog control) and a 9mm Parabellum Kommando (the Rhodesian copy of the Israeli Uzi).

Eve Guilbault Photo

Claude Lafrance, Amundsen first officer, instructs the Star's Peter Calamai in the use of a polar bear deterrent.

Against a charging polar bear, however, you need heavier artillery. Much heavier. Like the 12-gauge shotgun that I got to fire this afternoon.

The story starts four years ago when I was on the Amundsen icebreaker in the Beaufort Sea west of here. A misbehaving helicopter engine forced Andy Derocher, a top Canadian polar bear expert, to spend a night with us.

At the request of the researchers on board, Derocher gave an impromptu talk about polar bears. I’m sure there was all sorts of biological content but the part I remember vividly is how difficult it is to stop a 500-kilogram charging male polar bear with even the heaviest artillery.

According to Derocher you’d be lucky to get off more than one round at killing range and you shouldn’t even think of a warning shot. It was kill or be killed in the rare instance that a polar bear had you in his sights.

All I had in the sights of the 12 gauge was a plywood rectangle about 20 metres away over the ice at the stern of the Amundsen. Four targets of concentric circles had been hastily drawn by hand because the store-bought targets had been shredded in previous practice.

Every group that goes out on the ice any distance away from the ship is supposed to be accompanied by a “gun,” meaning a crew member or scientist who holds a Firearms Acquisition Certificate and has firearms experience. On past Amundsen expeditions, there’s often been a paucity of people qualified to be a “gun.”

It’s our good fortune on Leg 7A of this expedition to be favoured with at least two young women researchers from families where daughters learned how to use guns, One of these, Halagonian Lisa Delaney, was in a group headed out for target practice today and she tipped me off so I could take photographs.

Yet again on this trip, however, I morphed from detached journalistic observer to active participant when Claude Lafrance, the Amundsen’s first officer, offered a chance to fire the 12 gauge. At first I declined but then machismo triumphed. After all, if some mere slip of a young woman could manage, surely 240 pounds of well-aged manhood could.

I am relieved to report that I didn’t point a loaded weapon at anyone, remembered how and when to engage the safety and ensured the shotgun was handed over empty to the next user. Nor did I fall over backwards with the recoil, which wasn’t as powerful as suggested by the muzzle blast.

I probably also didn’t hit the targets with any of my three blasts. It’s difficult to know for sure since we were firing shot-filled shells instead of the slug-filled ones you’d use for really deterring polar bears. So every inch of the plywood was sprayed with tiny holes. Maybe a few were mine.

It should go without saying (but in today’s accusatory climate, who knows) that none of the researchers want the death of a polar bear on their conscience. Yet I think I could pull the trigger if the necessity arose to protect me or my companions.

But maybe the trigger of a .308-calibre rifle, the other firearm carried by the Amundsen’s  “guns.” The shotgun is best for close-in defence and I’m not keen on being that close to  anything whose claws can gouge furrows five centimeters deep into a skull.

 

Hockey day in the Arctic

ON THE ICE BESIDE THE CCGS AMUNDSEN – On the world’s largest outdoor ice surface – the entire Arctic Ocean - the scientists and crew of the Amundsen icebreaker put on the world’s cleanest hockey game this afternoon.

It must have been clean because there were no penalties during the two-and-half hours of spirited play. No referee nor linesmen either. Or blue lines or a centre line.

Yet there was a good-sized playing surface after the Amundsen’s plows had shoved snow off smooth ice that’s at least a metre and a half thick. As well there were creases and nets (wood frames with poly plastic) and a frozen orange ball that stung like blazes if you were hit.

And plenty of goals (no official scorer, though.) Plus lots and lots of fun, which was the whole idea.

Right beside the marathon hockey tournament, a smaller but equally energetic group mounted a virtuoso soccer display. An utterly unscientific survey suggested that the Europeans aboard the ship gravitated to the soccer while the Canadians preferred hockey.

But there was no curling, Canada’s national winter sport (pace lacrosse). This omission was especially unfortunate since in far-off Vernon, B.C. Canada’s Jennifer Jones was at the same time clinching the women’s world curling championship. Of course everyone knows that the Canadian rink is also favoured in the men’s world championships next month.

Well, maybe not everyone. There were quite a few quizzical expressions among the scientists when a former Ontario schoolboy curling champion (long since retired from competitive curling) proposed adding a sheet of curling ice to the snow-clearing chores.

The rocks? Fill some large discarded tin cans with water and insert a wooden handle as they freeze. Coloured circles for the house? There’s red hydraulic fluid and something called alcian blue that stains the lab glassware. Brooms? Plenty of those aboard, and not those new-fangled push ones either.

Adding pebbles to the ice surface would be a cinch. Even in today’s relatively balmy minus 22 C water drops would have frozen in minutes.

About the only serious problem is the lack of a sponsor. Hurry hard, Tim Hortons.

Getting onboard with Earth Hour

ABOARD CCGS AMUNDSEN—At 8 o’clock last night the view from the Amundsen’s bridge was dazzlingly bright, even though the sun was only 10 degrees above the horizon.

There were no outside lights to switch off to mark Earth Hour because the usual night time lights hadn’t yet been turned on.

PETER CALAMAI PHOTO

A snowmobile headlight is illuminated but outside lights on the icebreaker haven't yet been switched on at 9:15 last night, as the Amundsen' contribution to Earth Hour.

“I told you,” said a smiling Captain Lise Marchand.

As the onboard representative of the newspaper championing Earth Hour, I had raised the question of the Amundsen observing Earth Hour with numerous people right after coming on board two weeks ago.

Few had even heard of the event. Those who had were skeptical — of the purpose and of the value. The captain noted that it would still be quite light here at 8 o’clock on March 29 because of our northern position.

As well, more than one scientist pointed out that they were here in the frigid Arctic actually working hard to understand climate change and living on a vessel were every watt of electricity, every ounce of fuel was carefully husbanded.

“Those people down in Toronto will turn off some lights for an hour and then go back to driving their SUVs to pick up milk from the convenience store and wasting electricity with old beer fridges in their basements,” one said.

But Star reporters don’t give up easily.

I continued to talk up Earth Hour with kindred souls. I downloaded material from the web and left it at the captain’s doorway. I began raising the topic with Tim Papakyriakou, the very busy but also exceptionally patient chief scientist.

It all came to a head yesterday when Tim and the captain agreed that the Amundsen should do its part, even though the gesture would be mostly symbolic because the twilight now lasts almost until 9 o’clock.

So the plan wasn’t to turn off some the ship’s external lights. Instead, they won’t be turned on until after 9.

And that’s what happened. As it turns out, I joined an excursion last night out on the ice to an instrument-crammed sled which is the pride (and sometimes the heartache) of  Environment Canada researchers.

The  Amundsen was a bone-jarring snowmobile ride away across more than a kilometre of snow drifts and occasional ice ridges. It looked very small.

It also looked dark. Not until a quarter after 9 did the customary spotlights flick to life, like fireflies around the decks.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit feeling some relief when a light illuminated the red maple leaf emblem on the ship’s funnel. That’s my home, I thought, and it’s warm there and the bar is open tonight.

But I’d be dissembling if I didn’t also confess that I returned home to find that I’d left all the lights ablaze in our cabin.

 

 

No steam in sight

INSIDE THE CCGS AMUNDSEN–This venerable icebreaker is just as impressive below deck as it is above. More, if you are the one misfit from a family of engineers.

First, a confession. As an ancient mariner pointed out in an email, I have been guilty of anachronism when writing about the Amundsen “steaming” away.

As a descent into this ship’s bowels demonstrated today, there’s no steam involved in propelling her. In fact, the Amundsen was “green” decades before the current vogue, with the twin 14-tonne propellers driven by two DC electric motors.

Because the two shafts are turned by induction, there’s no gear box and nothing to damage if the 5-metre-wide propellers whack a piece of ice, although substantial nicks have been discovered when the ship was in dry dock.

That electricity is generated from two, four or as many as six V-16 main engines which run on marine diesel fuel. And before that old salt starts typing again, yes the diesel-electrics put out AC power which is then converted to DC.

That’s merely the icing from a fascinating 90 minutes spent with chief engineer Stéphane Dufour, who is responsible for everything mechanical on the ship, from the morning shower water to the power needed to advance at a steady three knots through metre-thick ice.

Growing up, Stéphane thought about becoming a doctor. But a friend mentioned the Coast Guard and by the first “sea phase” experience at the Coast Guard College, the 17-year-old had found his calling.

“It’s what I thought I was going to be doing as a kid but with bolts and not people,” he says.

Doctoring a 98-metre vessel takes four other engineers, six “oilers” and an electrician to together provide 24-hour monitoring of the ship’s vital signs.

Even when the Amundsen is immobile in the ice, like now, it burns between 5,000 and 6,000 litres of diesel a day in a smaller V-8 ship’s service engine for the electricity, heat, fresh water, and sewage system needed for this combined floating hotel and peripatetic research centre.

When the Amundsen is struggling in tough ice – as a week ago – daily fuel consumption can soar above 30,000 litres with all six V-16 main engines throbbing and a second V-8 service engine also running. On one day in early January the ship gulped 40,000 litres, a rate that even tanks holding 2.7 million litres can’t sustain when the next fill-up isn’t until mid-June.   

There’s also a third V-8 for redundancy plus a smaller diesel engine above the water line, so if the ship is holed and taking on water below there will still be emergency power.

As the photograph from the engine room shows, the scale of this hidden machinery is Brobdingnagian compared to the miniaturized instruments in the laboratories above deck.

That scale is one reason that it takes a half-hour to get the engines purring if the ship is in open water. When the ship has been chilled in an icy vise, however, the engineers like 90 minutes to bring the lubricating oil temperature gradually up to the optimal 70 C. In practice, the ship will run at Dead Slow for some time while that load helps warm up the engines.

A shame I can’t call it “getting up steam.”

PETER CALAMAI/TORONTO STAR

Amundsen's chief engineer Stéphane Dufor walks between a V-16 main engine and a V-8 service engine below deck in the icebreaker.