This summer, WWF is helping support two expeditions that will take on some of the world’s most difficult waters, to see first-hand the effects of Arctic climate change. One expedition is sailing across the top of Russia, a journey of 6000 nautical miles through the Northeast Passage, while another is attempting a west to east transit of the Northwest Passage, also by sailing boat, a journey of about 7,000 nautical miles.
Tom Arnbom of Sweden was on the ‘Explorer of Sweden’ though the Northeast Passage, as was WWF Arctic Programme Director Neil Hamilton for much of the trip, replaced near the end by WWF polar bear coordinator Geoff York. On the ‘Silent Sound’ Cameron Dueck of the Open Passage Expedition is filing regular stories from the Northwest passage. Come back for photos and stories throughout the summer, and follow the progress of the boats as they follow in the wake of some of history’s most intrepid explorers.
By Cameron Dueck
When Silent Sound entered the Work Boat Channel of Herschel Island, we were expecting a day or so at anchor at a quiet historical site, perhaps with a hunting party or two in the area. How little did we know. Herschel Island was a booming community of some 25 souls by the time we left two days later, most of them scientists who paced around the island looking very serious in their Gore-Tex clothing with clipboards clenched in their hands. They’re all there because Herschel is an easy place to come and see how climate change is affecting the arctic ecosystem.
Besides the scientists, we met the Mackenzie family, who have been living on the island for generations and now use it as their summer hunting camp.
Herschel Island was a key harbour for whaling ships 100 years ago. It then became an important RCMP outpost before being abandoned, and then becoming a national park. Meeting the Mackenzie family was great luck on our part, as they have generations of oral history on the place.
Marjorie Mackenzie was born in the old family log cabin, where the extended family was now staying with a brood of children. The area around the cabin was busy with wheelbarrow traffic as the kids hauled each other around camp and a jumble of mattresses laid out to air, fishing nets, knives, guns, coffee mugs, toys and scraps of firewood. But in order to get to all that you had to cross a swampy bit where the seawater was creeping up over the land.
“It’s just getting a lot warmer. There’s more water right by the house here, this bit of water right in front used to never be here,” Marjorie said.
Herschel Island is slowly sinking because its permafrost is melting. Chris Burn, of the Department of Geology at Carlton University and one of Canada’s pre-eminent permafrost experts, happened to be visiting the island, as he has done for decades.
“We know there has been a 2C warming of the permafrost in the last century, its harder to know how much of that has occurred in the last 50 years because of the data we have to work with,” he said. “This is happening because of higher air temperatures at the surface.”
At 15m below the surface the permafrost is now –8C, while it slowly gets colder downward from there.
“We know that it is definitely warming to 42m, but surface temperatures suggest that measurable temperature change is penetrating to 80m,” he said.
“Think of the amount of energy needed to input to warm that amount of mass, all that soil, to that extent.”
Burns said the biggest impact of melting permafrost in the Canadian Arctic will be the higher cost of maintaining an building municipal infrastructure for the many small, scattered communities. With taxpayers facing the bill for this, the problem will likely dwarf into a political hot potato before it gets solved.
“Can we reconcile ourselves with the rising cost of northern life, which takes place in a transition area for climate change,” he asked.

This summer, WWF is helping support two expeditions that will take on some of the world’s most difficult waters, to see first-hand the effects of Arctic climate change. One expedition is sailing across the top of Russia, a journey of 6000 nautical miles through the Northeast Passage, while another is attempting a west to east transit of the Northwest Passage, also by sailing boat, a journey of about 7,000 nautical miles.
Tom Arnbom of Sweden was on the ‘Explorer of Sweden’ though the Northeast Passage, as was WWF Arctic Programme Director Neil Hamilton for much of the trip, replaced near the end by WWF polar bear coordinator Geoff York. On the ‘Silent Sound’ Cameron Dueck of the Open Passage Expedition is filing regular stories from the Northwest passage. Come back for photos and stories throughout the summer, and follow the progress of the boats as they follow in the wake of some of history’s most intrepid explorers.
By Cameron Dueck
Silent Sound is at anchor in Barrow, Alaska, America’s most northerly point
and one of the front lines of the battle between oil companies and citizens
concerned about the side effects of oil and gas exploration.
Barrow is the administrative centre of the North Slope Borough, which of
course includes the Prudhoe oil and gas facility and other North Slope
fields. Exploration has become the bread and butter of this area, but with
it have come a whole host of worries that Barrow scientists are trying to
address.
Heightening the concerns for residents is the fact that a large percentage
of the Inuit living here remain subsistence hunters, and they rely on the
animals and land around them for food.
“The mayor is opposed to some of this further development, but it is in
federal waters, and it is coming. What we’re trying to do is get more
science done,” said Karla Kolash, special assistant to the mayor of the
North Slope Borough. “We don’t think and oil spill can be cleaned up in
these weather and ice conditions up here.”
Bowhead whale and caribou populations are two of the more important species
for local hunters, and in both cases there is concern that exploration
activity affects their migratory habits.
Oil and gas exploration is ramping up in Canada, and Alaskans say that
communities across the border could learn something from their experiences.
“Stay involved, do what you can to be in the decisions making process,”
Kolash said. Our fear is that one day they’ll just run right over us.”
Scientists here are increasingly combining traditional science and knowledge
gathered from hunters and elders and combining this with scientific facts to
get a fuller picture of the wildlife.
At the Ilisagvik College, sitting on a windswept spit of land that protects
a shallow lagoon just north of town, much of the work focuses on wildlife
research and preservation and finding out how modern human activity affects
the Arctic environment. Even as they study the negative effects of oil
exploration, funds that come in from selling these exploration rights are an
important source of funding for their research.
Cyd Hanns is a research assistant who spends much of her time looking at
contaminant levels, a concern in the Arctic because ocean currents deposit
pollutants in the North.
“We’ve begun testing in particular the parts of the animals that people here
eat,” Hanns said.

This summer, WWF is helping support two expeditions that will take on some of the world’s most difficult waters, to see first-hand the effects of Arctic climate change. One expedition is sailing across the top of Russia, a journey of 6000 nautical miles through the Northeast Passage, while another is attempting a west to east transit of the Northwest Passage, also by sailing boat, a journey of about 7,000 nautical miles.
Tom Arnbom of Sweden was on the ‘Explorer of Sweden’ though the Northeast Passage, as was WWF Arctic Programme Director Neil Hamilton for much of the trip, replaced near the end by WWF polar bear coordinator Geoff York. On the ‘Silent Sound’ Cameron Dueck of the Open Passage Expedition is filing regular stories from the Northwest passage. Come back for photos and stories throughout the summer, and follow the progress of the boats as they follow in the wake of some of history’s most intrepid explorers.
By Cameron Dueck
As the Silent Sound approached the Bering Strait we had to make a
choice. Little Diomede or Wales, Alaska? A little research showed that the
community in Diomede would charge us $100 per crew to come ashore.
Meanwhile in Wales, the western most community on the North American continent, we had a contact that could introduce us to local community leaders, so we opted for Wales.
And in Wales, where weather beaten homes cling to the sand dunes at the foot
of the Brooks Mountains, we heard stories of how climate change looks from
the ground. The 150 people living there are largely subsistence hunters, and
their oral history of the place goes back generations, so they know a change
in nature when they see one.
Frank Oxereok Jr was one of the hunters that picked us up from the beach
after we made a harrowing landing in the surf on our small rowboat. Baseball
cap pulled low and sitting astride a quad bike, he was the picture of the
modern Inupiat hunter. He’s not a climate change expert or scientist, but he
had a long list of changes he’s seen in the land and weather in recent
years.
“There is much more southerly wind now than five years ago. We get more
southerlies in the winter, and this causes all the ice to bank up on the
shores and we can’t go out and hunt,” he said. “Something is happening. We
hear a lot about global warming. All I know is that when you get cold and
warm weather together you get wind like that.”
Little Diomede, which lies in the shadow of Russia’s Big Diomede in the
middle of the Bering Strait, did not have an airfield last year because the
ice was too thin. In normal years they smooth out the sea ice and planes
land on the ice right in front of the village.
“The shore ice is getting thinner and thinner every year,” said Ruben
Ozenna, a longhaired hunter nicknamed Soup by his friends and family. “When
we were young we’d go chip a hole in the ice for ice fishing and it would
take us a whole day to get down to the water. Used to be deeper than I’m
tall, now it’s no problem to dig through.”
Here, all the stories centre on hunting, and woven into the stories are
signs of the changing times as well as bits of family history. And now, they
also contain nuggets of information about climate change.
“The thin ice makes it a lot more dangerous for hunting. You have to work a
lot faster now, because the weather can change so fast. You can end up
adrift on a floe. My uncle when out hunting and he ended up floating to
Point Hope. Then he went there a few more times after that because he found
a wife there.”
But most worrying to them both are the changes in the wildlife they rely on
for food. Warmer temperatures mean southern species are moving north, they
said.
“We saw sea otters on the ice this spring. That’s unheard of. It’s the first
year we’ve seen that. Next thing you know we’ll have sharks up here,” Soup
says, shaking his head in disbelief.
Find out more about the expeditions
Official site: Northeast Passage 2009
Official site: Open Passage Expedition