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A small ship in the big Arctic

21 January, 2014From the fieldstudents on iceuser

The Arctic Tern I, © Students on Ice / Pascale Otis

A small vessel allows close interaction with communities. Arriving on a small yacht (as opposed to by plane, or sailing in on a large ship) instantly signals to communities that you have made a big effort to visit. We have found that small boats, although more and more common in the north, still create a real interest with people in every town we visit. A small boat provides an environment that both youth and elders appear comfortable and happy to visit (and possibly work on in the future). Arctic Tern has been a great facilitator for meeting the locals, sharing stories and having a laugh as we sit around the table over a hot coffee!

We can spend more time on individual projects, for a lot less cost, compared to larger expedition ships that typically have multiple projects sharing time and resources, and a very inflexible schedule.

We can access shallow coastal waters, exploring areas of the coast where larger ships generally don’t sail.

Doing anything in the north requires either a helicopter/plane or boat to go anywhere. A small yacht allows us to operate autonomously, providing a floating research platform, film platform and comfortable living for all aboard!

What are the challenges of piloting a small ship in the Arctic?

To stay safe while sailing the Arctic in a small vessel, the crew pays close attention to the elements.

The weather is a daily obsession aboard, and one of the main factors determining when we start and end the season, and when we move the boat.

We track sea ice cover very closely in the Spring. We can’t cross the Labrador Sea and Davis Strait, or get to remote northern communities, until the sea ice has melted or broken out. During the summer we constantly monitor ice charts to keep track on drifting pack ice and areas with a high density of icebergs. Ice is obviously a constant risk in the north that governs every decision.

Sailing north in spring, daylight hours increase rapidly, making our job progressively a lot easier – we can see most ice (unless it’s foggy). Conversely, sailing south at the end of the season, it gets dark quickly. Combined with the poor weather, this is a key factor determining when we move the boat, as there can still be a large number of icebergs around in late summer.

Studying the Arctic by ship

14 January, 2014From the fieldLast Ice Area, polar bears, students on iceuser

Arctic Tern I is a polar expedition vessel acquired by the Students on Ice Foundation in partnership with WWF to provide a safe, environmentally friendly, cost effective, and versatile platform for education, research and media projects in the Arctic. In summer 2013, Arctic Tern I headed to the eastern Canadian Arctic and on the first of a five-year mission to assess biodiversity in this important and fast-changing part of the world, and contribute to constructive and collaborative solutions for a sustainable future.
Polar sailors and scientists Grant Redvers and Pascale Otis share their experiences and photos from the journey, in the first of a four-part series. All photos are courtesy Pascale Otis / Students on Ice.
What type of research did you conduct in the eastern Canadian Arctic and what did you discover?

The Arctic Tern I is a great platform for scientific research. We can spend large amounts of time in one area and even access remote places that would be out of reach to larger ships.
In 2013, the crew of Arctic Tern I set sail for the North with a project from the Canadian Wildlife Service on our hands. We completed offshore bird surveys, which meant counting every bird that we encountered while crossing to Greenland and also in the Canadian Arctic. As we reached the northern parts of Baffin Island, we sailed close to two Thick-Billed Murre colonies and took high-resolution photos. These would be later used to estimate the number of breeding pairs nesting on the cliffs.

Also on our busy agenda: banding 20 Murres on Bylot Island with special geolocator tags. These will allow scientists to track where the birds are going in the wintertime. It was hard work climbing the cliffs and catching the birds, but all worth it!

We had the privilege of joining scientists while they were tagging orcas in Tremblay Sound near the community of Pond Inlet. The GPS tags placed at the base of the dorsal fin of 6 adult orcas will allow the scientists to follow their movements for the next few months. We know very little about these whales, so the information recovered from this study will surely be extremely valuable.
What is a typical day onboard Arctic Tern I?
There’s really no such thing as a typical day onboard any sailboat! We always try to plan in advance, but our schedule is usually very flexible.

Every day is full of surprises, as we never know when and where we’ll see something to add to our growing list of once-in-a-lifetime-opportunities. Perhaps a polar bear will come swimming around the boat this morning… so of course we’ll probably put off lifting the anchor for a couple hours and set up our cameras on deck instead!
Depending on the project, the crew of Arctic Tern I can take on various roles from sailors to filmmakers, photographers and scientists. We have strong scientific backgrounds, but we also work in the media quite a bit.
You might also like:
2012 expedition to the Last Ice Area aboard the Arctic Tern

January 2014: Where are the bowheads now?

10 January, 2014From the fieldbowhead, species tracker, whaleuser

Arctic whale specialist Pete Ewins gives us an update on the bowhead whales being tracked by Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Canada.

The new year started with another impressive map for all the bowheads still with working satellite radio tags, yeah! As the sea ice continues to thicken and extend southwards, the bowhead are concentrating in areas they’re familiar with from previous years, where there’s ample ice movement and large leads (cracks) for breathing.
For anyone that inspects the Canadian Ice Service maps for this region, you’d be forgiven for being a bit puzzled. The area where most of these bowhead whales are this week, just N and NE of Charles Island, just NE of Salluit and Deception Bay, seems to be at the maximum ice cover – 9-10/10ths. Well, that’s right! These whales love to be close to and among the heavy annual sea-ice. Their huge reinforced heads and the rostrum, and lack of a dorsal fin, enable them to break ice a few feet thick if they need to, so that’s how this species has evolved over tens of thousands of years! The 3 bowheads to the east of Iqaluit /Baffin Island are in an area of broken/patchy sea-ice, at the edge of the open water in Davis Strait. All will be well clear of any predatory Killer Whales that may be still hanging around these regions. (Overnight temperatures in Salluit-Hudson Strait region are around -30C now).
Of course we can’t travel to these areas, so we rely heavily on this fabulous technology to beam the locations back to our computers! Beyond simply tracking the whale movements, the aggregated information over a season and then over years helps resource managers and scientists produce a well-informed picture of the key areas used by these magnificent whales as they over-winter. And in the face of increasing industrial development activities (like commercial shipping, oil & gas, and fishing) it is vital to know where these key areas are, and then to put all the measures in place to truly protect them from adverse impacts of human activities, especially in these high risk arctic marine environments.
Learn more about bowhead whales

Being a volunteer in the Congo basin: Personal transformation in a changing climate

8 January, 2014People, Uncategorizeduser

Tapang Ivo Tanku, Cameroon (WWF) – The first time I suggested dropping my pen as an international journalist and becoming a communications volunteer for the World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF), nobody batted an eyelid.

In my country Cameroon, it is common for international news correspondents and national journalists to pick-up several beats for their news organizations. But they rarely think of conservation as a strong beat that could transform the environment, where humans live in harmony with nature.

I have eventually found myself working for WWF, an experience I know I will enjoy for the next few months.

While volunteering for WWF’s Central Africa Regional Programme Office (CARPO) I came across multiple challenges over the past two months which have inspired me in my career in the regional communications department.

Investigating and reporting the truth is no longer enough for me. I now push for public policy implementation through advocacy and lobbying at several political and social levels. By engaging in stronger communications and media relations strategies, I am certain that I now have a real opportunity to invest much of my experience acquired into a broad spectrum over a number of years.

The statistics I received from our WWF experts have been particularly alarming. Though they inspire me to push for change, I find it hard to swallow a pill as bitter as 200,000 hectares of land in Cameroon that is lost to logging every year. This ranks my country second in deforestation after the Democratic Republic of Congo – another Congo Basin country.

What a shock, I exclaimed to Kevin Enongene Enongene, an intern at WWF, and the first true friend I made at WWF CARPO just few days after.

The fact that illegal logging and extractives industries have pushed the Baka indigenous group in Cameroon to the brink of extinction was another quite startling revelation.

“This is an indigenous community that strongly represents Cameroonians even on the international platform,” Enongene, who specializes in a WWF climate change project, told me as we sat down together to review documents while sipping coffee.

I took on the task to investigate, narrate and produce a short documentary on climate change in Cameroon that was presented in November at a UN Climate Change summit in Warsaw, Poland.

Just as I had finished recording my script, UN scientists made me re-frame the story all over again to include their report revealing with a 95 per cent assurance, how humans are to blame for the rapidly changing climate.

“This is absolutely true. Cameroon has witnessed a huge and persistent increase in rains, floods and droughts in recent years – causing severe food insecurity,” a Climate Focal Point expert for the Cameroon government Dr Joseph Armathe Amougou told me in my first video interview I recorded for the WWF documentary.

This situation will become worse if we do not integrate the local communities and indigenous people in Cameroon into the fight against climate change, Amougou added.

It is amazing to be part of a team of conservationists and climate change experts working on the field to change the destiny of the Mbororo, Baka, Bakola, Bagyeli and Bedzang minorities and indigenous people, who make up nearly 50,000 of Cameroon’s population.

“Our rights to property and access to land have been seriously jeopardized by large-scale industries,” said Thomas Mbarga, an indigenous person in the East region of Cameroon speaking in his local Baka language.

Mbarga, 25, raised concerns of the extinction of his community if WWF was to end its fight for humans to live in harmony with nature.

May this never happen, I told Mbarga whilst interviewing him in his thatched home.

Another conservationist who inspired my work was Fideline Mboringong, a young lady who joined WWF-Cameroon a few days after I took up service. Tapang, you seem to do everything with passion, from journalism to communications and media relations, Fideline said to me while I mounted an HD Camera to record an expert.

I believe in having multi-dynamic and multidisciplinary skills in communications to so that we can successfully/efficiently live in harmony with nature, I told “Fidel,” as I usually call her.

I have had the opportunity for the first time in my career to send out a press release to relevant national and international media. Unlike receiving emails from communications officers, as was the case with my previous position as a journalist, I find myself in another realm of success.

What is more humbling is seeing these stories published by national and international media, with reporters always calling to have more facts from our experts.

“I am only happy we are reaching out to a wider public. We will do even more,” I told my friend Enongene when we discussed at length about our different career achievements at WWF CARPO.

Over 42,000 voices for polar bears!

4 December, 2013Polar bearspolar bearsuser

WWF Director General Jim Leape with signatures, International Polar Bear Forum 2013

The appeal of polar bears transcends far beyond their Arctic home. When we asked WWF supporters to thank Arctic countries for their work to conserve polar bears and ask them to lead the way again, the message quickly spread to all corners of the earth – from Greenland to Argentina to Spain and Australia. Over 42,000 people have signed on. Today, we’re in Moscow to bring this global thank you card to environmental leaders from all five polar bear countries – Norway, Canada, Russia, Greenland (Denmark) and the United States.
It’s not hard to see why polar bears capture imaginations around the world. They’re an emblem of the Arctic, a powerful predator perfectly adapted to life in some of the most challenging conditions on earth.
To many, they’re also an emblem of threatened species. But in some ways, polar bears are a good news story. They’re still found around the pole, in roughly their original range, and in numbers estimated at 20,000 to 25,000.
The challenge before the polar bear countries now is to keep this positive story from becoming a cautionary tale. The biggest threat to polar bears is climate change. Sea ice – the habitat that polar bears require – is expected to reduce dramatically in the coming decades. By 2040, projections show only a fringe of summer sea ice remaining along the northern coast of Greenland and Canada – the Last Ice Area. In addition, less ice means more industrial development and shipping in the Arctic, further north than ever.
How can polar bear countries help the species adapt and thrive? Good management decisions must be based on solid science, and we have little information about many of the world’s polar bear populations. How many polar bears are there in understudied populations? Are they healthy? Are their numbers changing over time? We’re asking the range states to make this research a priority today.
Of course, all the research and management in the world won’t help polar bears if their habitat simply doesn’t exist. Keeping polar bear numbers healthy in the long term will require investment in renewable energy, not just by Arctic nations, but the global community. Luckily for polar bears, people around the world care about their future.

Live from Moscow

3 December, 2013From the field, Polar bearspolar bearsuser

Moscow in December is a magical place. Snow and holiday lights transform the historic downtown into a true winter wonderland. Christmas decorations fill store windows, and decorate the interiors of cafés, and restaurants giving all a sense of hope and good cheer. Cooler temperatures and shorter days also seem to slow the pulse of this bustling capital city to a pace I can better appreciate.
It’s my fourth trip to Russia this year and I am here to participate in the most significant polar bear conservation event of the year: the International Forum on the Conservation of Polar Bears and Range States Meeting. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears – a landmark accord that brought much needed attention to polar bear research, management, and conservation policy. The Agreement effectively addressed the leading threat of the time, unrestrained commercial and sport harvest, and committed the Parties to the conservation of polar bears writ large and notably the ecosystem of which they are a part. This is the first pledge to use ecosystem based management for any multilateral conservation agreement.
As the Agreement enters its 40th year, both the times and the threats have dramatically changed. No longer is harvest the leading concern for long-term conservation. Climate change and the resulting loss and alteration of sea ice habitat is fully in the fore. The loss of that protective ice cover is also opening both polar bears and their Arctic Home to a suite of new threats, largely centered around increasing human activity in the newly emergent seas. Will the Agreement and the Range States tackle these new challenges with the same sense of urgency that originally brought them together? Well, we hope to hear more on that topic this week.
Specifically we are seeking three results from the Forum:

A roadmap for the completion of a global conservation plan and a timetable for its implementation
Commitment to research and monitoring of polar bear populations and habitat
Creation of a work path that includes all stakeholders, including: Indigenous peoples, governments, environmental and conservation organizations, academia, industry, and the international community

Stay tuned as we update progress this week- live from Moscow!

Polar bears are coming to Moscow

27 November, 2013Polar bearspolar bearsuser

Next week, we’re celebrating the 40th anniversary of a turning point in global polar bear conservation.
40 years ago, the polar bear countries – United States, Canada, Russia, Greenland (Denmark) and Norway – made forward-thinking conservation commitments that helped several polar bear populations stabilize and largely recover from the historic threat of over harvest. The countries are coming together again next week in Moscow, for the first International Forum on the Conservation of Polar Bears.
They will be celebrating the past 40 years, but they also need to plan for the next 40 — addressing the realities of a changed Arctic and a new major threat to the species: global climate change. As the Arctic ice cap recedes each year, issues that were unthinkable when the Agreement was signed are now at the forefront. Shipping and oil and gas development are increasing faster than governance can keep up, while distribution changes are forcing bears into greater conflict with people.
Yet in many ways, polar bears have a better chance at survival now than in 1973. Thanks to the Agreement, harvest is largely controlled. The role of Indigenous people in polar bear conservation and management since the Agreement was signed has changed remarkably and positively. We have an opportunity to take action that will help to conserve polar bears before their habitat is irreparably changed.
Will these countries lead the way again? We’re asking them to make meaningful commitments to polar bear conservation in the coming years. Add your voice, and we’ll share your message next week:

Sitemap titles in footer

12 November, 2013CMS Newsfooter, titlesuser

The titles of the sitemap in the footer now work as links.

Alert Logic

12 November, 2013CMS Newsalert logic, websiteuser

Alert logic will be installed on the servers during the coming 2 weeks. It has not yet been installed.

Storm season

12 November, 2013From the field, Polar bearschurchill, polar bearsuser

Polar bear sleeps through a storm in Churchill. © WWF

As the ever weakening dawn light rouses me in my window perch, I notice something has changed- wind. In Churchill as in much of the Arctic, windstorms are a common occurrence and can drastically change your plans for the day, whether you’re a bear or a person!
This morning the winds are coming straight out of the North and right off the Bay. It gently rocks our buggy and whistles through the many gaps and cracks around doors and windows. Luckily for us, it’s still relatively warm with temps hovering around -10 C.
Windy days often mean less activity for wildlife as well. Polar bears in this part of the world all come ashore in July because the ice completely melts each summer in Hudson Bay. Once onshore, most of these bears begin fasting and go into what scientists call a “walking hibernation”. They spend much of their time resting and waiting and can actually turn down their metabolism to conserve what stored energy they have onboard. As the weather gets colder in November, the bear’s activity starts to increase as they prepare themselves for the coming freeze. Today, however, the wind keeps them down and most find a quiet, protected spot to simply curl up and nap the day away.
Unfortunately, for bears here in Western Hudson Bay, the sea ice is melting earlier and freezing later on average. This means bears have a shorter time to put on weight in the spring and a longer fast each summer. Adult bears in good condition can go incredibly long periods without eating substantial calories. Pregnant females, dependent young and subadult bears are not so fortunate. Without enough stored calories, pregnant females are less successful raising families and the young bears that are weaned have a harder time surviving their first years alone. The reduction in survival has lead to a long term decline in this population that is expected to continue. But for now, to the casual observer here on the Tundra, polar bears are literally just outside the window. Let’s do what we can to keep it that way.