High Arctic teen takes a dip in Antarctic waters

MIRIAM HILL

Although he hails from Resolute Bay, 17-year-old Steve Amarualik is now part of the Antarctic Swim Team.

Known in Nunavut for his award-winning Arctic sports skills rather than his swimming prowess, Amarualik represented the territory along with about 30 students from seven countries on the Students on Ice Antarctica 2002 learning expedition last month.

The group, made up of about 75 people including students, chaperones, scientists, film crews and reporters, set sail on a six-deck icebreaker, the M/V Polar Star, on Dec. 16. They departed from the tip of South America and spent two weeks exploring the Antarctic Peninsula.

Amarualik said the most memorable part of the trip was swimming in the Antarctic Ocean.

“That was special. I’m part of the Antarctic swim team now,” he said in an interview from his school in Resolute Bay. “There was a hot spring on one of our stops and they asked us if we wanted to swim in the ocean and we said, ‘Sure.’ It was warmer than here, but it was still probably -2 C.”

The students swam for at least half an hour, he said.

The trip wasn’t all sightseeing and leisure activities, though. After being selected and raising $10,000 each to participate in the trip (some won the privilege by writing essays and winning contests), the students were sent pre-expedition materials to familiarize themselves with the area and the issues they would be studying while on board the ship.

Geoff Green, the director of Students on Ice, said the theme of this year’s expedition was climate change.

“We had a number of experts on board who deal with climate change,” Green said. They included Jonathan Shackleton, a descendant of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.

The students waded into the political side of climate change on Dec. 23 when they made a telephone call to federal Environment Minister David Anderson, whose department ratified the Kyoto Protocol, a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, on Dec. 16.

“We called him while we stood on top of a glacier in a bit of a blizzard and he was home in Victoria for Christmas,” Green said.

“We had about a 30-minute chat with him. It was great. Each of the kids individually spoke to him and he asked them questions like what they thought of Antarctica and he also related some of his feelings from his trip to the Antarctic.” Anderson visited the continent about four years ago.

Amarualik was one of the students chosen to talk to the minister. He had met Anderson when the minister stopped at Somerset Island, where Amarualik was guiding, during a tour with European environment ministers.

Amarualik congratulated Anderson on signing Kyoto and told him how the Antarctic differed from the Arctic.

“It was a satellite phone so we couldn’t talk too long,” he said.

“It was the same [as the Arctic] but everything was 10 times bigger and more peaceful, more animals,” he said. “The mountains, the glaciers, icebergs, everything. They were bigger. When we were coming back from our Zodiac rides we could compare the ship with the mountains and our ship was pretty big, but it looked kind of small in front of the mountains.”

Amarualik also forged a close friendship with a young man from Brooklyn, New York.

“They made fun of us,” he said, chuckling. “This kid from the high Arctic, this kid from Brooklyn becoming close friends.”

Green said this is the kind of thing Students on Ice wants to foster, a respect and love for the environment around the world and an opportunity for youth to experience both it and each other.

“I came back with more education of the world. They were mostly talking about Antarctica and that’s what we learned most about — climate change,” Amarualik said. “But it’s also a great way to get your perspective on life.”

Founded in 1999, Students on Ice leads learning expeditions to both the Antarctic and Arctic regions, corresponding with their respective summers.