Conducting Marine Science in the Arctic - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 222

Ships were not the only floating platforms for conducting Arctic oceanography. Ice
sheetsmainlyonthenorthcoastofEllesmereIslandperiodicallyshedfragments.Theirsize
was measured in miles or kilometres. Some drifted into the circumpolar circulation. The
most famous was designated as T3 (Fletcher's Island) and intermittently carried a research
station until 1983, when it exited via Fram Strait into the Atlantic. They were extremely
stable platforms, but, of course, there was no control over where they went. A year before
the loss of T3, a large part of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf disintegrated. On one of the result-
ing fragments, the Canadian Ice Island Research Station, or Hobson's Choice, was set up.
George Hobson was a neighbour in Manotick, south of Ottawa, Ontario, and as director of
Canada's Polar Continental Shelf Project (PCSP), he was a very important person to know.
He controlled the logistics used by most scientists to physically travel, work and survive in
the Canadian Arctic. The research station was operational from 1985 until the early 1990s.
Marty Bergmann was a later director of the PCSP.
Unfortunately, the 24-square-kilometre Hobson's Island never entered the circumpolar
circulation, and after drifting very slowly westward, it eventually exited the Arctic Ocean
through the Arctic Archipelago. I visited the island in February 1990, arriving (as did
everyone else) by a Twin Otter on skis. At the time, it was home to several projects in our
quest to understand the cold condensation processes by which POPs reach the Arctic and
then biomagnify (described in the previous chapter). To me, the island resembled a fortress
with a high defensive wall. The surrounding multiyear sea ice was reticulated by pressure
ridges caused by ice floes pressing against each other in a fashion resembling the creation
of the Himalayas through plate tectonics. It was 50 metres thick. Therefore, ice floes under
pressure at the perimeter ofthe island were simply thrown uphaphazardly against this solid
mass to build the “fortress wall”. It is unlikely that we will see large floating ice island-
based research stations again. The ice shelves from which they were born are rapidly dis-
appearing in response to global warming.
In1995,Canadastillhadnowinter-capableArcticresearchvessel.Canadianscientists
looked with envy at the polar-capable ships of other countries, such as the amazingly
equipped and resilient Polarstern operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.