Photo: Coast Guard ship to continue mapping Arctic seabed

Winchman Kirby Vatcher uses a crane on board the CCGS Louis S. St. Laurent to load supplies in Tromsø, Norway, before heading to the Arctic Ocean for seabed mapping. The Coast Guard ship visited Norway to support the Galway Statement, an agreement signed by Canada, the U.S. and the European Union in 2013 to collaborate on comprehensive science programming to better understand the North Atlantic Ocean basin. The ship will now head to the Arctic Ocean to collect seabed data along Canada’s extended continental shelf in the Arctic Ocean as part of Canada’s submission to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) project. Staff on board the Louis S. St. Laurent will use “state-of-the-art multi-beam sonar systems,” to increase the amount of seafloor surveyed in the Arctic, says a July 29 Coast Guard news release. (PHOTO COURTESY CCG)