'Like being on different planet.'

When Warwick Vincent flew over the northwestern coast of Ellesmere Island last month, he was shocked to see open water where, at the same time last summer, he saw ice.

"To see that blue water as far as the eye could see, it was like being on a different planet," said Vincent, director of Laval University's centre for northern studies and a researcher who has studied the ecology of northern Ellesmere Island for years.

"The sight was absolutely extraordinary."

Vincent flew over the place where the 50 square-kilometre Markham ice shelf broke away from Ellesmere Island coastline where it had been attached for about 4,000 years.

What's left of the ice shelf is floating around in the Arctic Ocean.

Two large sections of ice also detached from the Serson ice shelf this summer, shrinking this ice shelf by two-thirds.

And the Ward Hunt ice shelf, which lost a large chunk in July, also continues to break up, losing an additional 22 sq. km..

Of six ice shelves in existence 50 years ago, only four now remain.

The ancient 4,000-year old shelves, tens of metres thick, are attached to the land, floating on the sea, where they normally rise and fall with the tides.

When Robert E. Peary explored northern Ellesmere Island in 1907, most of the land-fast ice was still intact, but, by 1982, 90 per cent had already been lost.

And, since then, rising air and water temperatures – likely linked to greenhouse gas-producing human activity far to the south – have caused even more loss of the ice shelves.

Rising temperatures is something Vincent experienced first-hand on Ward Hunt Island last month where the high reached a record-breaking 19.7 C on Aug. 2. On nearby Ellesmere Island, the temperature that day rose even higher – 20.5 C.

The continuing loss of the ice shelves will change the surrounding environment enormously, Vincent said, producing even more change on the land and sea.

"We're looking at radically different coastal marine environment at the northern limit of Canada relative to a year ago," he said in an interview from Quebec City.

The loss of the Markham ice shelf may affect air temperatures in the immediate area. Impacts on fish and other marine life, which spent their life under the ice shelf, are also likely.

As well, when there is no more ice, the land nearby will warm up more quickly in contact with the open water. Permafrost melt and erosion could result.

Already lost with the shelves are remnants of microscopic life sound seen nowhere else in Arctic or Antarctic.

In summer, shallow parallel troughs or lakes of melt water form on an ice shelf's surface, which is marked with ridges much like those on potato chips.

Sediments, called ice mats, collect in this shallow water, and they teem with microscopic life forms.

"We thought they would be around for a long time and suddenly they were gone," Vincent said.

An estimated 10 tonnes of material in these ice mats floated off with the Markham Shelf.

So, from now on researchers will have to rely on older sample collections when they study these unique pockets of micro-organisms.

They're particularly interesting, Vincent said, because the tiny life in the red-coloured ice mats show how life survived and evolved during major freeze-up events in earth's early history.

For some animals and vegetation, the warming climate and all the changes it brings may open new possibilities.

When he was on Ellesmere Island last month, Vincent spotted waterfowl called grebes swimming around on the surface of a lake known as "Lake A," which had remained frozen year-round until recently.

"There is an incredible ability of the northern fauna to adapt. There will be winners and losers. One of the winners is the grebe," Vincent said.