Coring the ice: an exploration northward

(Latest in a series on the effects of climate change in the Arctic by Tom Litwin of Smith College)

The first group of scientists to go out on the ice waits anxiously as the gangway is craned into place. The process of going from the ship to the ice is considerably more complicated than it looks.

Meanwhile, the bridge command and deck crews go back and forth by radio evaluating the safety of the ice. The ice must be thick enough over a large area to satisfy data collection and resist the force of the ship pressing into the newly broken edge.

The helmsman gingerly maneuvers the massive hull that is being simultaneously pulled and pushed by currents, ice and wind. She wants the 36 mph wind blowing squarely against the port side, keeping the starboard pressed against the ice where the gangway will be placed. Things get complicated if the ship blows away from the ice on which 15 scientists are working, and starts cracking as the 420 foot ship repositions to recover the group.

Keeping in mind the Healy is an “icebreaker,” an indelicate process by design, the ship has been positioned just right, the gangway goes down, and we leave the ship. I’m surprised by my own level of excitement as I step out onto the ice. Back home, as winter drags on in Massachusetts, ice comes to complicate the landscape. Here, with the first step, I realized the ice is the landscape.

For a long while I stand just looking at the ship with a new perspective and a sobering realization. It is a very tiny island that supports our survival in an expansive environment where all other life not only depends on ice, but thrives on it.

Rolf Gardinger and graduate student Sarah Story, University of Alaska Fairbanks, fire up an auger that drills a 10-foot-wide hole through almost 3-feet of ice. Hole dug, Story lowers a water collection canister into the hole and takes water samples at different depths. More holes drilled, more samples collected.

Gardinger switches to the ice corer -- an industrial sized apple corer -- that produces 4-inch diameter cylinders of ice. Saw in hand, Story cuts the cores into discs and puts them into carefully labeled baggies. Back in Fairbanks, they will classify and count the organisms that emerge from their melted samples. Bundled in layers of protective clothing, only their eyes showing, this four-hour session is taking place on 3 feet of ice, in 30 mph winds, temperature 10 F.

Gardinger and Story are describing and assessing the health of the tiny plant and animal ice dwellers that are a foundation of the Bering Sea ecosystem. Anything but barren, the underside of sea ice is grey-brown from all the algae covering it. Small animals and fish eat the algae -- larger fish eat the smaller fish -- seals eat the bigger fish -- polar bears eat the seals. As the algae grow, it rains down into the water below, then to the sea floor. At each depth some critter is eating it, or being eaten. In this otherwise very cold, stark place, life is wonderfully interconnected and thriving. Remarkably, it all revolves around frozen water…. ice.

In the next installment…. Saying good bye to the Healy and helicoptering to the Siberian Yupik village of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island. After taking the pants right off our host, we begin the 58 mile snow machine journey to Savoonga village with the question, “Is this a good idea?”

Litwin, a Smith professor, is blogging from an expedition in the Bering Sea.