Conducting Marine Science in the Arctic - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 216

Ours was one of two of these tough little ships that was quickly outfitted to provide
a winter science platform. Hydrographic winches to lower instruments over the side, rudi-
mentary wet and dry laboratories and extra accommodation were installed. A wooden heli-
copter padwasbuilt overthe stern foremergency evacuations. Mostofthe cabins andwork
spaces had no heating, although some were fortuitously located near the engine room's
cooling and exhaust pipes. Warmth at night came from using the best sleeping bags money
couldbuysupplemented bysleeping inallyourclothes. Themesscouldonlyaccommodate
six at a time seated at a single table. Between meals, that table was our office and lounge.
If you missed your mealtime spot, you risked going hungry, as the galley had no facility to
reheat or store cooked food.
In the 1930s, it had served as a research ship for the Norsk Polar Institute. Embossed
in large letters below the bridge was its original name. After World War II, it worked in the
Barents Sea seal fishery and around Svalbard and eventually found its way to the spring
seal fishery off Newfoundland. I had one of the two most “comfortable” cabins on the ship,
facing forward and directly below the bridge. Because of its rugged specifications, it was
often in demand and had spent several years ferrying supplies from Cape Town to Antarc-
tica as part of the 1957 International Geophysical Year. Pinned to the wardrobe in my cabin
was a telex from Nikita Khrushchev thanking the crew for its good work.
It carried a crew familiar with winter ice conditions off Labrador and a wonderfully
experienced skipper who had worked on similar vessels all his life. He could predict the
nature of approaching ice (before we could see it) just by looking at its reflection in the sky
or clouds. The day after leaving Iqaluit, we entered Hudson Strait and began our method-
ological transects back and forth across Davis Strait. On arrival off the Greenland Coast,
we would move north for 100 kilometres, head east until we were back off Baffin and then
repeat the pattern, moving ever northwards. This type of sampling design produces what is
called a synoptic survey and is a necessary step if youwish to describe the characteristics of
a given piece of the ocean. At regular intervals, we would stop at a “station”, make physic-
al and chemical measurements from the surface to the bottom and collect plant and animal
samples from the water column to the seabed. Also at intervals, we would set up arrays of