Icebreaker finds no ice to break

When the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen left Kugluktuk on Sept. 28, its crew expected plenty of run-ins with sea ice.
Instead they found clear waters as far north as 72 degrees.

“There was no ice,” said Gary Stern, the chief scientist on board the icebreaker, which serves as a floating laboratory for ArcticNet, a group of more than 250 scientists who share a common interest in climate change and the Arctic.

They could find no better example than the waters surrounding them.

Ice conditions were so mild, the icebreaker easily navigated through Fury and Hecla Strait into Foxe Basin and made an unscheduled call at Igloolik. Stern said that is “unprecedented at this time of year.”

There, researchers heard that hunters were unable to travel to Baffin Island to hunt caribou, and were contemplating a charter flight.

Some 5,500 nautical miles later, the ship paid a visit to Iqaluit this past weekend, where guests from Nunavut boarded the vessel for a lecture, lunch and tour.

“This could be the Arctic of tomorrow, in the summer,” Martin Fortier, the executive director of ArcticNet, told the crowd, gesturing towards an overhead map of a globe with nothing but blue water surrounding the North Pole.

But it’s the ship’s potential use as a platform to survey public health in Nunavut’s that caught the attention of some guests.

In the summer of 2004, the vessel, as part of the Qanuippitaa health survey, visited all Nunavik communities.

Researchers asked questions about the health, lifestyle and diet of people in the communities they visited, and looked for signs of heart disease and exposure to environmental contaminants.

The survey had a 78 per cent response rate, with 1,050 participants involved, Fortier said.

A similar study, proposed as an International Polar Year project, could be conducted in Nunavut next summer, if it’s approved.

Some older Inuit may be wary of the Amundsen if it reminds them of the C.D. Howe hospital boat, warned Lynda Gunn, CEO of the Nunavut Association of Municipalities.

That vessel sailed the Arctic between 1950 and 1969, testing Inuit for tuberculosis and whisking many people away for prolonged treatment in the South, before they could say goodbye to their families.

“It was a very traumatic experience,” Gunn said, but added that work done aboard the Amundsen is supported by hamlet representatives.

“We’re very much looking forward to this.”

Dr. Isaac Sobol, Nunavut’s chief medical officer, also said he supports the idea.

“This is going to be our agenda. This is going to be our interests that will be looked after,” he said.

Many guests and researchers said it’s important that researchers share their work with northern residents.

“We’ve been researched to death, but we’ve never really participated in research,” said Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Nunavut’s member of parliament.

“I really wanted this kind of exchange,” said Jose Kusugak, the former co-chair of ArcticNet’s board of directors. “I think it’s necessary for the Inuit leadership to say come here… so that research isn’t imposed on the Inuit.”

“It’s important we partake in this.”

Louis Fortier, one of the lead scientists on board, said his goal is to see several young Inuit become scientists on board.

A dozen students boarded the Amundsen in Iqaluit for its next voyage, to Quebec City. Among them are two students from Nunavut, one from Gjoa Haven and one from Cambridge Bay.

“It’s part of our plan to contribute to the next generation of scientists,” Fortier said.

During this leg of the Amundsen’s voyage, researchers will collect sediment samples at several of Labrador’s scenic fiords, to study contamination at abandoned U.S. radar stations, and a nearby nickel, copper and cobalt mine.