Arctic Ed's Travelog

 Ed has returned home from his 51 day sail to the Arctic this weekend. He has provided us a wonderful journal of his travels that Paul Burney has been displaying in this blog. There will be some follow-up entries as he analyzes his data. If you would like to receive notification of further developments, or if you are involved in Arctic exploration or teaching projects, drop us a note at arcticed@concord.org with your email, and we will keep you informed. 

It appears that he also has been very much appreciated on the boat by his mates. Here is an email that I received from Finley Perry, the captain of the ELSKOV (and the rest of the crew) this week.


Dear Ms. Staudt:
 
This is a note to tell you that August 29th not only will be the conclusion of ELSKOV's north about voyage, but will also be, most fittingly, the first day of Arctic Ed's sixty second year.
 
The captain and crew of ELSKOV would like to publicly recognize this event, as well as express our congratulations, gratitude, and love for Ed. His voice of roaring inquiry, enthusiastic appreciation, and dogged description of everything and every moment has brought enhanced shape, sound, color, smell, and taste to our experience and adventure this summer.
 
Any vicarious enjoyment of the experience you all have enjoyed is entirely due to Ed's tireless labors. It has been a voyage of discovery. Much of the discovery is only beginning. Many happy returns to all of us! And a most happy birthday to Ed!
 
Yours truly,
Finley Perry
Tom Nangle
Darin Carlton

August 29 8AM

This was our last stop before Baddeck, a small steep uninhabited island in the middle of the Cabot Strait. The anchorage was poor and a change in the weather is expected, so we left at 6AM. With luck we'll catch the current going into the Bras D'Or lakes.

We were welcomed by great numbers of very curious gray seals with huge dog-like heads. They slid off the rocks and swam back and forth around us for a while. I listened with the hydrophone but no conversations. I took a plankton sample and the net glowed like a Christmas tree when I pulled it up. It was coated with bioluminescent creatures, and I could see them being washed down into the collecting bottle like fairy dust. Pretty neat. The microscope revealed a number of numerous species, so I'll need to dig a bit to see which one glows. Cladocera (water fleas)? Cypridinidae? I made movies!

Tonight, 51 days and about 3600 miles after leaving Baddeck, we will complete the loop.

I hope you enjoyed my account. I certainly enjoyed writing it.

Temperate (no longer Arctic) Ed

August 28 5PM

The Cabot Strait separates Newfoundland from Cape Breton Island, which is part of Nova Scotia. Reputed to have wild and difficult weather, today it is calm sunny, and warm. The air temperature is 20 C, the water 18 C. Having circumnavigated Newfoundland, we are about to close the loop.

At this moment we can see Newfoundland behind us and Cape Breton ahead! The ocean is glassy and smooth. Darin spotted a leatherback turtle, which was exciting for me because I've seen them at their egg-laying beach (Tortuguera) on the Atlantic shore of Costa Rica. Talk about pelagic! Best of all, we now know of one animal that eats jellyfish.

Yesterday we left Woody Harbor and Bonne Bay after lunch. What a beautiful place! We hiked up to the Visitors Center of Gros Morne National Park and tried to absorb a wealth of information in the form of recordings, dioramas, diagrams, and rock samples. The big story is plate tectonics, the record of which is laid bare in the landscape here. No wonder geologists go wild. Everything they've read about plate collisions has been assembled and displayed like a textbook, one that took 600 million years to write. Crowning it all is a red-ochre "Tablelands", devoid of vegetation, a huge chunk of peridotite straight from the mantle, obducted above the North American Plate when the pre-Atlantic ocean closed up. How all the pieces got where they are today is utterly confusing. I wanted them to make a 3-D computer model of the motion of all the rocks so that I could play it again and again and watch the layers shift and slide and squish and wear down and form rocks anew.

Last night was clear. The new moon made a brief appearance and then followed the sun below the horizon, giving us about 9 hours of darkness. Bummer. But the stars were brilliant, the wake glittered with bioluminescence, and the northern horizon glowed gently with a broad auroral band. Nothing fancy, no shooting rays or wavy pulsations, just a delicate region of light that we've seen on every clear night for the last ten days. I guess Northern Lights need to be more energetic to be seen farther south.

It seems that 2007-08 is International Polar Year, an event that happens roughly every 50 years. The first one, in 1872-73, was apparently one of the first instances where scientists from several (14) countries managed to cooperate and share data instead of competing and attacking each others' theories and observations, which had been standard practice for arctic exploration. Check out the website. I don't know what events are being planned, but it seems fortuitous, doesn't it? Shall we all make reservations on an ice-breaker?

August 26 11PM

We had a magnificent passage down the west coast of Newfoundland today, with a strong north wind behind us and brilliant warm sunshine illuminating the water and the grand cliffs that run the whole length of this coast. Now we're on a wharf in Woody Point, a town in Bonne Bay. East of us is Gros Morne National Park, with a peak of that name.

The geology of Newfoundland is fascinating and complex, as I may have mentioned way back when we departed from St. John's. That side, the Avalon Peninsula, was once part of Europe. This side, the so-called Northern Peninsula, was part of Laurentia, the North American Plate. Between them, 400 million years ago, lay a pre-Pangaea ocean (Iapetus) that was wider than the present Atlantic ˆ so wide that this side has limestone deposits laid down in the equatorial zone, while the other was in cool northern waters. Then that ocean closed and the high plateau along this coast was created by the collision of ocean floor with Laurentia. Subsequently the plates spread apart again, splitting along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and creating the Atlantic Ocean. The Avalon Peninsula, identical to rocks in Scotland and Wales, remained on this side of the split. Also Laurentia split apart along the line of the Davis Strait, separating Greenland from Labrador. Throughout this trip I've been aware, as never before, of these geological edges, visible from the water, where continents collided and mountains were born, inexplicable before plate tectonics. It is no less dramatic for having happened a very long time ago. It all makes the living landscape, the plants and animals, seem so very recent. Even the glaciers are recent compared to the rocks.

For the first time last night we made cell phone calls. Tom made a wireless connection with his computer. Welcome back. Today there were rows of cabins ˆ though not very many ˆ dotting the shoreline. And I followed tiny white dots moving along coast that were automobiles, not polar bears. More northern Labrador and all Greenland towns have no connecting roads, of course, which even here are relatively recent in a land traditionally connected by water.

I've been reading Barry Lopez (Arctic Dreams) with an eye to his take on the scientist's perception of the landscape. He alternates between a material and ecological description and a more psychological and spiritual one. He seems to respect the scientists for their great attentiveness but prefers the Inuit hunter's more integrated observational skills and feelings for the landscape. What he cares about is the spiritual dimension of the Arctic, what it does to your sense of self, and it's the hardest thing to get at. Every book about the Arctic talks about this. Many writers try to grasp the Inuit conception of the north, which they see as fundamentally different from ours. I've made no effort to summarize or reproduce that material, since I have nothing to add to it. I should probably try to pull together a bibliography.

We really only touched the edge of Barry's world of the High Arctic, and we had no meaningful contact with the native people. Nonetheless I find myself resonating with Barry's take on the way the Arctic feels. I think the inquisitive scientific viewpoint, with its analytical tools, data-collecting network and deep respect for the natural world, has a great deal to offer, especially at a time when our perspective has become more integrated across disciplines and we appreciate the rich and complex connections among the web of systems that make up the Arctic ecology. In the end, though, as Barry puts it, "the physical landscape is baffling in its ability to transcend whatever we would make of it."

August 25 5PM

The Strait of Belle Isle is the channel coming out of the Gulf of St. Lawrence that separates Labrador from Newfoundland. Only about 15 miles wide, it has notoriously strong winds and currents and was a challenge for sailing vessels. In winter it fills with sea ice, and in summer there are icebergs.

No problem for Elskov the magic boat (and Finley the sensible skipper). The prevailing SW winds were against us, so we motored through most of the Strait overnight when the winds were down. The morning (5:40 AM) brought a beautiful sunrise over placid seas. Now it's really dark at night and the sun comes straight up! I'm still adjusting to this day-night cycle thing. On our right was the Labrador coast, now quite low and smooth, and on our right was Newfoundland, also low and smooth at this end of the Upper Peninsula. Now we are following the Newfoundland coast southward along its massive granite western shore. Labrador and Quebec, a vast region separated by the most arbitrary of lines, are receding into the northern horizon.

I feel that Battle Harbor is where everything started to change. When I sailed the western Newfoundland coast in 1992, I thought the villages were small and far apart. Now they seem so numerous compared to Greenland, Baffin, and Labrador. You pass by one and another is already in view! In fact they are miles apart with a vast empty landscape between them, but it's utterly different from Labrador north of Battle Harbor. Recalling Cape Cod, where there remain virtually no unbuilt spaces along the shoreline, I wonder if I'll still find it attractive or just be irritated.

Also, in 1992 the Strait was loaded with icebergs. This time I saw several large ones in the distance, grounded on the northern tip of Newfoundland, but otherwise there were none. Don't jump to conclusions, though; the ice patterns vary considerably from year to year. (A note on climate change: the inherently statistical and incomplete nature of data about the history of the Earth, which scientists learn to work with, is quite problematic for politics where everything is perception and anecdote. What do we do about this?)

Much to my surprise, the water temperature jumped from 10 to 17.7 C (63 F). Apparently we're out of the Labrador Current and into quite different coastal effects. I realize how little I know about the patterns of temperature change in my own boating territory around Cape Cod. No more! I'll always have a thermometer and a plankton net at the ready.

This brings me to thoughts about transition. We're still 300 miles from Baddeck, but it's not the Arctic, and we're not heading north. This journey is about done. How should this blog be concluded? What has been learned? What are you still curious about? What, if anything, should be carried forward? Has it modified the way you or I think about science, about oceans, about climate, about Earth history, about the use of the Internet and blogs? I welcome your suggestions. In the meantime, I have more meals to prepare in my small, rolling, and very familiar galley. And the little Hobo Tidbit is still loyally measuring water temperature every 12 minutes off the stern.

August 24 8PM

This journal entry takes a right turn, from nature to culture and from Native culture to European settlement. That's because we just spent a day at Battle Harbor (position given above). Now a beautifully restored "museum" with 22 buildings, it was an important staging area for Labrador fishing for 250 years. The last year-round residents left in 1968 during the "resettlement", when the Newfoundland government moved people inland to locations where better and less costly services could be provided. The Canadian government closed cod fishing in 1992, and a way of life was ended that stretched back to the Portuguese in the 1500s. It had to end. There were no more cod. Hence the slogan.

We learned a great deal in a short time, making me wonder what I could have written about Greenland had I spoken Greenlandic or Danish. It's also true that Newfoundlanders are wonderfully forthcoming. All of the merchants' buildings and traditional processing facilities here have been miraculously saved and restored, the earliest dating back to 1792, presumably because it was not a suitable place to tear them down and build a modern fish plant. The fishing industry here has always been based on salt. Cod were cured with salt, then dried on racks, then shipped. No salt, no product. Salt came from the West Indies (along with rum?), and the cod fed European and American seamen for hundreds of years. A staggering volume of cod went to Europe over this period, and yet the cod population stayed fairly high until after WWII when larger fishing vessels moved in. The population crashed over the next 40 years, amid much finger pointing. No one knows if and when it will recover.

All of Newfoundland and Labrador operated under the so-called truck or credit system. The fisherman leased or purchased everything he needed (nets, salt, drying space, food, dry goods) from the merchant on credit against the year's catch. The catch reduced but rarely erased his debt, because the merchant set the price of goods as well as the price of cod. This system of permanent economic slavery lasted for 150 years, keeping the fishermen impoverished and the merchants rich. Labrador was even more on the fringe than the remote Newfoundland settlements.

One needs to remember that Newfoundland/Labrador was a British colony up until 1949, when it joined Canada. With end of the cod industry in 1992, the province must remake itself entirely. Now Labrador from Cartwright north has local (Native) government, only a few years old. It may become an independent province. There is no love lost between the native population and the Newfoundlanders. One wonders how that will end up.

These transitions are very recent. Our tour guide had grown up in Mary's Harbor, the "inland" port to which people would retreat from Battle Harbor in winter, spending summers out here fishing with his father. The ferry comes from there twice a day. His aunt, the cook at the little hotel, was born here. Her house, now gone, is in all of the old harbor photos. He is part of the restoration and maintenance team, proud of what they have done (as he should be), and pleased to talk about the history and the lifestyle that has only ended in the last 40 years.

We chanced to meet Yvonne, the representative to the Newfoundland Legislature from this district (a 400-mile stretch of Labrador coast). Distressed by how Labrador was being ignored by the government, she ran as an Independent not expecting to win, but she did. As one of the few women in that position as well as a Labradorian with Native American ancestry from a fishing family, she got a lot of press. Schools, roads and other services have improved here, and there is a greater sense of empowerment. Now that may evaporate as people move away, since there's no work.

The future wealth of Labrador, by one opinion, is in minerals and hydropower. The nickel mine near Nain, I was told, is worth millions. No wonder there were geologists snooping around for more. There's also the tourist market, in its infancy to say the least. A few cruise ships are starting to come here. A small American vessel, a 90' Portuguese trawler beautifully refitted for cruising, came in this afternoon. (You can check them out at wanderbirdcruises.com.) The skipper is from Marblehead and his wife, also a skipper, is from Maine. They can take 6 couples on "expedition cruises" along this coast. We thought it looked like a pretty nice way to visit the Arctic!

We heard a bit about the harp seal hunt from a participant in that hun, who claims the seal population is growing and the limits are too low. They take "beaters", young seals who have left their mothers and are beating their way north. No pups are taken. The hunt lasts only 1-3 days, depending on how quickly the total limit set by the government is reached. A group of several hunters can bring home 500 seals in a single day, and the price is currently over $100 per seal. Apparently there's a good market for both the pelt and the meat. The seals are killed either by shooting or clubbing. He prefers the latter as more humane, since shooting can wound seals that then escape to the ocean to die.

Both here and in Greenland, I see three primary sources of income: personal hunting and fishing and barter, working in the market economy, and government assistance. The proportions and how they're changing might well help one characterize each community. It's certainly all in flux.

August 23 10AM

I had another scramble before breakfast at Snug Harbor. While Darin picked blueberries I tramped through the various ecosystem pockets, delighting in the softness, variety, aroma, and beauty of the vegetation. The greatest difference with the New England landscape is that here there is no bare soil like the leafy duff below trees. Every surface is solidly matted with living plants, often several at once such as blueberries and reindeer moss growing through a bed of sphagnum moss. In New England there's a (false) sense that the humus has always been there, perhaps because of the large trees. Here it is visibly in the process of being created. Also the newly formed organic material is often in rounded hummocks, copying the glacier-polished and now lichen-covered rocks but for a different reason. The tightly crowded surfaces near the ground are warmer and less dried by the wind. Everybody keeps their heads down, except for occasional brave tamaracks.

There were many more plants than I could take in or identify. Naturally I recognized my friends from Adirondack boreal forests, such as black spruce, larch, balsam fir, paper birch, alder, willow, mountain ash, Labrador tea, sheep laurel, cotton grass, sphagnum moss, reindeer moss, blueberries, crowberries, cloudberries, bunchberries, lichens and even ferns in a wet and protected vale. I apologize for the shallowness of the list. I'm a lazy naturalist with a poor memory.

August 22 11PM

Such is the name of our present overnight stopping place. We're tied to an abandoned government wharf in a very cozy cove, out of any wind but still close enough to the coast to be surrounded by fog. We arrived at 7:15PM and had time for a brief onshore scramble before darkness came on at 8:30. So early! It's hard to bear.

We're just by the outlet of a small brook fed by a long shallow lake that winds back into the rolling rounded hills, mostly a pinkish granite whose true color is visible only at the shoreline, the rest being buried in lichens. The hills are not high. The bay is not large. The scale is friendly and manageable, unlike Greenland or Baffin Island where all dimensions were staggering. It's like going from a cathedral to a parish church ˆ a letdown but also a relief.

In complete contrast to yesterday's island, the vegetation here is unbelievably dense. Crashing into it, assailed by branches, leaves, and aromas, I felt like I was on sensory overload. Our first broadleaf trees presented themselves ˆ alders, birches, and mountain ash. Hollows were so packed with short but dense larch and fir that one could scarcely force ones way through, and the ground was not visible. Even the treeless hillsides were transformed. Imagine taking the soft, spongy sphagnum mat of a bog, adding several other mats on top including reindeer moss and copious blueberries, and then plastering it against a steep hillside. Making my way up through it, knee-deep in delicious vegetation, eating handfuls of berries at chest level, I remembered how much I had loved southern Labrador and now understood why. There's a combination of the condensed intensity of tundra with the richness of the temperate zone that's special. Every surface is an exquisite tapestry of textures, and the tapestry is a foot thick. This is what plants will do given half a chance. And to think that all of this carbon is created out of the air itself!

This is so poetic. I should think more about the ecological basis for my perception. But surely we are now in the subarctic, and it feels more like the boreal forest that I grew up with.

August 21 9PM

We had an uneventful overnight with modest winds and clear skies. The northern horizon glowing with aurora borealis most of the night. Just at sunset we saw several killer whales. I listened with the hydrophone and heard some loud clicks spaced about 1 second apart after they sounded, but the sounds stopped before I could record them. Today the water was warmer than 50 F and the air was warmer than 60 F! We anchored at 4PM in the lee of some small islands quite far out (30 miles) from the mainland at the end of a long chain. The rocks were low, rounded and exposed. From a distance it looked like an unlikely place either for shelter or any interesting exploration.

I was wrong on both counts. We hiked around in a light wind and brilliant late-afternoon sunshine, admiring the blankets of tundra plants and lichens covering every surface, just as in Greenland. Flowers, if there had been any, were past. Instead were mats of crowberries (black), blueberries (or some close relation, blue), bakeapple (translucent brown, of Newfoundland fame) and some kind of bunchberry (bright red).

It seemed to be a serious bird island. A crowd of many dozens of eider ducks raced this way and that as we approached along the shore. Geese were all about, as was evidence of their nesting and grazing. A very irritated peregrine falcon scolded us from on high. Finley and I went the other direction to leave her in peace, but Darin tracked down the nest, heard the babies squawking, and was finally driven away when reinforcements showed up. We found and photographed a possible falcon eggshell.

The other delight was to discover that the area somewhat enclosed by the islands was teeming with jellies and comb jellies. They were quite magical in the clear sunlit water, their delicate shimmering bodies pulsating with infinite grace. Jellies go way, way back. There were three distinct kinds: the reddish one with two very long trailing tentacles that was ubiquitous in Greenland (sea gooseberry?), a more cucumber-shaped one without apparent tentacles but with iridescent ribs (also a comb jelly?), and a large more disk-shaped jelly distinguished by four adjacent yellow rings at the center of the umbrella. I caught (and released) one of the latter the size of a dinner plate. Again I wondered if any animal eats jellies. Does anyone know?

Finally, a small inlet had strikingly white sand in sharp contrast to the dark rock. On closer inspection I found that it was composed entirely of ground-up seashell. That whiteness continued out into the bay, suggesting a large source of shells nearby. For how many years has this been accumulating? Why here? Will this become a limestone layer millions of years from now?

We had our third supper built on Nain scallops and arctic char (chowder this time) and set out for another overnight. I pulled and unloaded the temperature log which the Hobo Tidbit had been faithfully recording ever since Uummannaq, reset it, and chucked it overboard again. In the end I'll connect the temperature log to the charts and see if I can make any sense of the variations.