Category: Changing Arctic

By Andrea Wright, Vancouver Aquarium director of development On board the MV Akademik Sergei Vavilov, staring out at the very grey and misty Lancaster Sound, it’s easy to imagine I’m at home on the West Coast of Canada. But many things tell me otherwise. The sea birds don’t look like our gulls. The ring seals … Continued

By John Nightingale, President & CEO, Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre As we begin our journey through the Northwest Passage, I can predict without any fear of contradiction that this trip will truly change everyone aboard in significant ways. Simply put, no one can take a trip such as this one and not come away … Continued

By Justin Lisaingo, Vancouver Aquarium biologist and diver Since we arrived in Cambridge Bay on August 3rd, the dive team has been busy setting everything up. We picked up our shipment of equipment, set up a life support system — for temporarily holding live animals — in the storage shed (while getting eaten alive by mosquitos), inspected dive … Continued

I have never been to the Arctic, although growing up in Alberta it almost felt like it sometimes. Perhaps some of you have visited the North, or perhaps you’ve experienced Prairie winters or been to Iceland, as I have. Perhaps some of you aren’t sure you’ve experienced anything like the Arctic; it is a place … Continued

I recently sat in the living room of Saul Aqslaluk Qirngnirq, listening to stories of how things were and descriptions of how things are for Saul, an Elder in the hamlet of Gjoa Haven, Nunavut. He told me about how he could read the snow and ice, knowing where it was safe to travel and … Continued

What happens in the Arctic impacts all of us. The Arctic functions as the Earth’s air conditioner, it drives global currents, and it controls and impacts global climate and weather. The North makes up almost 70 per cent of Canada’s coastline and 40 per cent of our land mass. Canada is an Arctic country and … Continued

As the fog was pushed ashore, so too was the ice. By mid-morning the other day, the shoreline was littered with an array of ice of varying size with more still coming.  Surprisingly, the fog burned off by early afternoon, and we were back to sunny, mild conditions. The amount of ice, and the unpredictability … Continued

With the winds in Grise Fiord finally calming down, we managed to depart Resolute Bay with another plane loaded with the last of our supplies and personal gear. The farther north you go, the harder and more expensive it is to find anything you left behind, so you always have to triple check before you … Continued

The Arctic, although an extremely important region of Canada, may not be well-known among all Canadians, but there’s an initiative that is working to change that. The Arctic Inspiration Prize is in its second year of annually awarding multi-disciplinary teams who have made a substantial contribution to the gathering of Arctic knowledge, and who have … Continued

We’ve talked a bit on this blog already about the importance of sea ice in the Arctic. But there are also large areas of “permanent” ice on land: massive sheets that spill glaciers – rivers of ice – into the valleys and the sea. You might have heard that if all of the ice on Greenland melted, the Earth’s ocean … Continued