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Discoveries from a “Ship of Ice” (2.4MB PDF)
Peta J. Mudie and H. Ruth Jackson
Commemorative Book on the Scientific Accomplishments of the Bedford Institute of Oceanography 50th Anniversary: 1962-2012
Accepted in review, December 2011
SUMMARY
It is probably true to say that The Ice Island Program was the most amazing Voyage of Discovery to be undertaken by Bedford Institute of Oceanography. Led by Drs Ruth Jackson and Peta Mudie at the Geological Survey of Canada Atlantic, the goal of the 1980s Program was to occupy a large semi-permanent ice island as a platform for the first oceanographic and geoscientific studies of Canada’s packice-covered Polar Margin between Ellesmere Island and Beaufort Sea. At the program start, this region of Canada was still unmapped: it was not even known if there was a continental shelf offshore – let alone what biological or mineral resources it contained. For five years, 40 people in joint government-university funded programs measured oceanographic and ice conditions, mapped the underwater territory, and studied the evolution of Canada’s northernmost continental margin. A permanent camp was built to allow seismic and geophysical surveys, seabed and plankton sampling, toxic and radioactive chemical surveys, oceanography, meteorology, atmospheric sampling and ice strength studies. Technical achievements are construction of the first large, deep (44 m) holes through a floating ice island for piston coring, dredging and water sampling; collecting >200km of seismic reflection and bathymetry data; taking the first underwater photographs of the seafloor beneath the permanent packice; and collecting sediment and biological samples from this hitherto unexplored part of Canada – in the coldest sector of the Arctic Ocean. Scientific highlights include discovery of previously unknown Arctic glass sponge reefs, records of recent Canadian Arctic Ocean warming, tracing of radioactivity, pesticide and dust fallout to from Britain, Ukrainia and China to the Canadian Polar margin, and mapping of bedrock that contains large petroleum reservoirs. The new maps also extend Canada’s continental margin 300% further northwards. The hands-on training and engineering experience from the Ice Island Program now puts Canada on the forefront of ongoing UNCLOS (United Nations Law of the Sea) survey work, and the ice strength studies are used to design new hulls of Coast Guard and commercial Arctic icebreakers
Canadian Ice Island photos
The Louis S. St. Laurent at 80N
Arctic catastrophes: sea ice changes and impacts in the Eastern Arctic during the past 4,000 years poster presented at the Conference on Rapid Landscape Change and Human Response in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic, June 15-17, 2005, Yukon College, Whitehorse, Yukon
(1200 x 900 pixels 464K JPG)
(2400 x 1800 pixels 1 MB JPG) or (884K PPT)
Mudie, P.J., Levac, E. , and Rochon, A.
For more informative research on climate change in the Arctic see Paleoecology.
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