Arctic fox poses outside the Great White Bear shop in Churchill. Don Walkoski photo.
This Churchill Sunday Photo by Great white Bear Tours owner Don Walkoski reminds us that winter doesn’t give way to summer in Churchill so quickly. Soon enough we will be seeing beluga whales frolicking in the Hudson Bay and Churchill River. What a beautiful Arctic Fox!
This massive ice berg off the coast of Ferryland, Newfoundland has been the talk of Canada and other world news stations. What a natural way to enjoy the day..gazing at icebergs floating by.
Iceberg chasers flocked to the coast of this town with a population of only 465 to gaze out at “Iceberg Alley” as this area of the Atlantic is known. This daunting iceberg is 15 stories high above waterline. However this only accounts for 10 per cent of its mass with the other 90 per cent below the surface.
“Most folks can’t wrap their heads around how big it is,” Barry Rogers, the owner of Iceberg Quest Ocean Tours, a Newfoundland tour operator, said in an interview on Thursday.
Over 600 icebergs have drifted into the North Atlantic shipping lanes so far this April, which is widely known as the beginning of iceberg season. The normal count for this time of year is around 80. And, while this parade of sorts is great for watchers the fishing industry in St. Johns for one is being held hostage. The entrance to the harbor is blocked by the dangerous behemoths and the fishermen are waiting for the winds and currents to clear a safe channel.
Icebergs of this size have been 15,000 years in the making. Snow on Greenland turned eventually to glaciers which broke free within the last few years and slowly floated out of Baffin Bay. Eventually the bergs are caught in the Labrador current heading south and end up in Iceberg Alley.
Arctic Easter egg hunt on the Arctic Ocean at Cambridge Bay. CBC photo.
This Easter egg hunt on the frozen Arctic Ocean at Cambridge Bay, Nunavut will make all other egg hunts across the Earth pale in comparison. What a way for the kids to celebrate Easter! I’m sure there were many polar bear monitors around as well!
Mario Tama photographed these breathless Arctic photos from a Lockheed P-3 accompanying a NASA crew carrying out Operation Icebridge, an operation initiated to measure Earth’s glaciers and ice sheets. The stillness, colors and textures of the Arctic landscape left Tama speechless.
“It’s such an unexpected landscape,” he says. “It felt like we were flying over a different planet.”
NASA spends 10 weeks each spring in the Arctic when the ice levels are at their highest using a pair of laser altimeters to record ice elevation and three types of radars to measure snow – one of which reaches 300 feet down to bedrock. Flying shifts of up to 12 hours, the crew surveyed hundreds of miles of coastline along Ellesmere Island in Canada and Greenland. While researchers focused on computer screens, Tama focused his camera on a landscape without scale.
“I was looking at shapes and features that I had never seen in my life,” Tama says. “We’d drop through the clouds or take a turn into a valley, and I’d be sitting there trying to process, what am I looking at?”
Last year the National Snow and Ice Data Center NASA and operation IceBridge announced the lowest ice levels for the Arctic and Antarctic in the past 38 years.
“Changes in Arctic sea ice is seen as one of the primary indicators of climate change,” says Nathan Kurtz, project scientist for Operation IceBridge. “It’s been changing so rapidly—the Arctic has been changing and warming. What we’re trying to do is get a sense of what’s driving some of the bigger changes that we’re seeing.”
Tama’s stunning images remind us all of the majestic beauty of the north that is in jeopardy due to global warming!
Ellesmere Island ice field. NASA photo.
Ice pack near Ellesmere Island. NASA photo.
Ice along the Baffin Island coast Greenland. NASA photo.
NASA avionics technician surveys the Arctic landscape. NASA photo.
Glacier on Ellesmere Island. NASA photo.
Baffin coast ice field Greenland. NASA photo.
A pair of young red foxes at their den entryway. Katie deMeulles photo.
This classic shot of a pair of red foxes at the opening to a secluded den in Churchill signals the start of spring. It will be interesting to see what bounty of wildlife appears in Churchill this spring and summer after a prolonged and ferocious winter. Stay posted for updates from the tundra!
