West Ice survey 2002: I

[read the start of this post here.]
Lance (pronounced Lancer), the Norwegian Polar Institute's expedition vessel, was our home for this voyage. We were to do a survey, estimating the number of pups born into the harp seal population off eastern Greenland in 2002. An ice-strengthened ship with a helicopter pad was essential, and Lance was one of only two Norwegian possibilities. The other was going seal hunting, and unavailable anyway. Originally launched as a fishing and sealing ship in the late 1970s, Lance quickly became the property of the Norwegian government. She spends most of her time in the Barents Sea and off Svalbard, with occasional forays to the Norwegian territory in the Antarctic.

Garry, Callan and Ilse all stayed with Sofie and me for a couple of days prior to departure. Garry, greying, coming into a paunch, is one of the senior Canadian government scientists responsible for assessing the size of harp seal populations off Canada. He was our aerial survey expert. Callan, from the University of St Andrews' Sea Mammal Research Unit, brought his years of field experience from the coast of the British Isles, subAntarctic islands, even the Caspian Sea - along with a bottle of peaty malt from Western Isles. Deceptively thin, Callan's capacity for hard work showed when he and I climbed onto our roof to shovel snow, a couple of days before we headed to sea. Ilse, a graduate student working with Sofie - tall, slender, with long, ever so slightly crinkly corn blond hair - looked like one of Tolkien's elves made flesh (but lacking pointy ears) - a walking advertisement for Dutch vegetarianism.

We stowed gear, met with the rest of the science crew, mostly folks from my new workplace. Tore (pronounced Tour-er)was boss, with a professor's position at the local university emphasizing his importance. He's the archetypal Saxon, from his reddish-brown hair, pale skin, beard and broad shoulders to his stomach, growing as befitted his importance. Tore came from a small town on an island south of Tromsø, a northern Norwegian boy who'd made it big. Lotta was Pippy Longstocking in her thirties – freckles, light blue eyes, red-gold hair, fit. Just like Pippy, she was Swedish, and like Nils Eric, a research assistant. Nils Eric was the real local – born round Tromsø, raised on a tiny farm just out of town. He was smallish for a Norwegian – about 5-9 and 175 pounds, beard turning to white, face reddened from life in Arctic winds and drinking. Completing the crew were Ivan, a computer technician from our institute, along because he was a keen hunter and so was thought to have a good eye for animals, and Bjørn (a different Bjørn from Bjørn on Svalbard), it's a common name in Norway), a grizzled old research assistant from the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen.

Kjell (pronounced sort of shell, but with a small tch at the start - tch-shell), Tore's second-in-command, was off to eastern Greenland in a photo-reconnaissance plane to run the other half of the project.

Sofie and I shared a room on the same level as Tore, who as cruise leader had a palatial cabin. Everyone else had all had separate cabins, as Lance was nowhere near full. Our room was unexpected luxury: wood panelling, room to move, a decent desk - even our own personal bathroom, complete with shower. Our cabin was on the deck that was more-or-less at water level.

The helicopter – a Squirrel - landed on its platform, had its rotors removed, and was lashed down. A few hours of stowing gear, the obligatory safety demonstrations, wending our way through the channels around Tromsø and we were off to sea.

First, we were off to Jan Mayen, the tiny volcanic island about 600 miles west of Norway, 400 miles north of Iceland, to unload fuel for Kjell's plane. Kjell's initial responsibility was to locate whelping patches, places where pregnant seals meet in their thousands to give birth. Harp seals have their pups on sea ice, and off east Greenland they're usually near the ice edge, so the exact location of whelping patches differs from year to year. Months earlier, Kjell had organized for fuel to be delivered to Nerlerit Inaat (I have no idea how to pronounce this properly, its name in English is Constable Point), home of the airstrip for Ittoqqortoomiit (nor this, Scoresbysund), the northernmost permanent settlement in east Greenland. His only other possible options for landing were Akureyri (Ak-you-airy) in northern Iceland, and Jan Mayen. The dirt strip at Jan Mayen took the Norwegian air force's C-130s, used to resupply the base there, so was long enough for Kjell's little Piper Navajo. But the island had no aviation fuel stores, so we had a line of 50-gallon drums lashed to the rails of Lance as we headed off.

As usual, most of the science crew lay in their bunks in varying degrees of discomfort for the first day or so. Only Tore always seemed immune to that initial bout of seasickness. Viking genetics, perhaps. The rest of us emerged one by one as the hours of our second day at sea stretched on. We hit a storm about half way across, so our three day steam became four. With the helicopter perched on its pad, high and exposed, the captain slowed the ship to a gentle one-knot trudge into the wind. The pilot and engineer climbed out for regular checks of the lashings. Losing the Squirrel at this point would have been embarrassing.

[read the next part of this post here]