Capt yamott in steel ocean game
The fate of Greenland's glaciers is a center-stage concern for climate scientists since their rate of melt will help determine how fast sea levels rise. He also studies what happens to Greenland glacier melt as it enters the sea. New arrivals included Robert Pickart, a scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who has been studying how warm water can get channeled through undersea troughs to accelerate melting in tide-water glaciers. Mayer and other scientists who had boarded in Seward, Alaska, got off the Healy when the ship reached Nuuk, a city of some 17,000 on the southwest coast of glacier-clad Greenland. Nowadays, a science party often has vegans, and they always had a vegan option," he said. He said that morale was high this year, and galley food - which some years has been a disappointment - ranked as the best ever. This was Mayer's 10th cruise aboard the Healy, so he has a lot of experience on what can go right and wrong on the vessel. This was not much by historical standards, but surprising in comparison to the recent steady decay of the ice pack," said Bernard Coakley, a University of Alaska Fairbanks geophysical scientist who was aboard the vessel Sikuliaq during a six-week Arctic trip that ended Sept. It was thicker and extended farther south. In another Arctic research cruise that ventured some 500 miles north of Alaska's northern shoreline, scientists also reported considerably more ice than in recent years. Mayer said there was considerably more ice this year than in some years past, but that it was largely young ice, not the multiyear, thick floes that used to be a frequent sight during the summer cruises.
The Healy had made frequent forays to the Alaska Arctic, but this was the first time since 2005 the vessel has traversed the Northwest Passage, which consists of several different routes that - as sea ice has declined in recent decades - have become more accessible. The vessel also hosted a rotating cast of scientists who conducted research in different parts of an Arctic maritime environment undergoing epic change as temperatures warm. "To see where they started and where they are today is just amazing."
"The best way to train is just to get there and do it," Boda said. Some of the crew are as young as 18 and began this cruise fresh out of boot camp. Arctic presence with three new icebreakers that later in this decade are planned to be homeported in Seattle. This has been, in part, a training mission for the 85 crew members, a task that has added importance as the Coast Guard prepares to increase the U.S. After a jog south, the Healy headed north again and through the Northwest Passage to the Atlantic. The vessel is deep into a marathon voyage that began July 10 as the 420-foot ship pulled away from its berth at the Coast Guard base in downtown Seattle and traveled into Arctic waters off Alaska. Boda spoke via telephone during a port call in Boston.