Have a drink on the 10,000-year-old rocks
Newfoundland ice that has attracted tourists also set back snow crab and lobster season
LEWISPORTE, N.L.— I’m set to see some massive ice, but the day doesn’t seem to be co-operating, with the mercury smashing through 30 degrees, fans working overtime, waves of humidity hanging in the air.
It’s the hottest day some of the locals can remember, but as I wipe away a bit of sweat from my forehead and climb aboard the Beothuk Explorer — a sturdy catamaran built right here in Lewisporte — the skipper assures me that we will find plenty of the frozen stuff once we cruise out of Big Burnt Bay, toward Shoal Tickle.
“Oh, we spotted a big berg out there a few days ago,” Mussel Bed Boat Tours captain Graham Wood says. “We’ll see if we can grab some of it for our drinks.”
It’s June and we’re cruising near Lewisporte in Central Newfoundland, a way station on Iceberg Alley. With a record amount of ice rolling down from Greenland and Baffin Bay (some estimates say as many as 1,000 bergs have littered the island’s shipping lanes), it’s been a banner year for those seeking some unforgettable photos.
But as I sail along, I seek to surpass the images, learning that they’re just the tip of the iceberg, learning more about this part of the island and its unique relationship with these gigantic hunks of ancient ice.
While for some visitors, getting next to an iceberg is a bucket-list, once-in-a-lifetime experience, Iceberg Quest captain Barry Rogers says that for most fishermen over the decades, that’s too close for comfort.
Sailing with him the previous day out of Twillingate, Rogers pilots the Cetacean Quest through a minefield of “bergy bits” and “growlers” (smaller chunks of ice that have calved off the main iceberg), Rogers says that the amazing amounts of pack ice this year led to the latest start of the season in memory, for tours like his.
“And lots of fisherfolk are just getting ramped up now,” he says with a Newfoundland twang, explaining that the same ice that has kept tourist boats at the dock has set back the snow crab and lobster season.
But, he says, it’s nothing new in this northern, maritime corner of Canada. Growing up the son of a “fish collector” — his father would gather the catch from other fishermen and ferry it back to port — Rogers knows his way around an iceberg, recalling seeing one several kilometres long, so big it took more than half an hour to circumnavigate.
“Back in my father’s day, icebergs were a plague. They could crush a lobster pot, or cream a fishing net,” he says, eyes forward in the wheelhouse as we near a big, tabular iceberg. “It was the difference between surviving, financially, or not.”
As we sidle up to a berg that towers over the Quest, I leave the wheelhouse to get a better look, noting that the temperature has dropped dramatically as a stiff breeze bounces off its icy top and sides, creating a microclimate from these miniature katabatic winds.
Snapping a few photos, I notice that my fellow travellers seem entranced by the ice, as if we’ve encountered not a giant hunk of the same stuff we skate and slip and drive on (poorly), but some sort of primordial creature, an awe-inspiring thing of wonder that’s come back from the past to warn us about the future.
And I consider the facts — that this iceberg, and the others I spot on the horizon, dates back some 10,000 years, has travelled here all the way from the arctic and that, despite its massive size, 90 per cent of it remains submerged under the slate-gray water.
Wandering back to the wheelhouse, Rogers muses on people’s fascination with these strange mountains of ice.
“There’s a mystique about them, when they loom out of the fog and you’re bearing down on them, they look 10 times bigger than they actually are,” he explains, adding that, inevitably, he gets asked all the time about the Titanic and, specifically, the size of the berg that took it down.
“I’ll tell you this — it doesn’t have to be very big to take down a ship. It’s as hard as steel and most of the berg is below water, where the ship is most vulnerable.”
That statement is top-of-mind the next day, emerging out of Shoal Tickle on the Beothuk Explorer, a big, blue berg looming — dead ahead.
Despite the heat, the temperature drops and I pull on a thin windbreaker I had packed that morning as a precaution, extremely doubtful I’d have a chance to use it.
Sailing into its shadow, Woods points out a dark seam that runs through the iceberg ’s middle, formed when ice melts into a crevice and then freezes quickly. With the weather today, it’s melting fast, water rolling off it like rain in a storm, a gusher pouring off the side.
As we near a growler, Woods, a retired school administrator who has been running these tours for13 years, snatches a fishing net, leaning perilously low over the water and hauling up a hunk of ice that barely fits inside. Hoisting it onto the deck, he grabs a claw hammer, while I hold the net.
“Close your eyes,” he shouts, just in time, as he lowers the hammer and smashes the berg to bits, creating a momentary ice storm that temporarily freezes me.
Grilling up some salty capelin, Woods pours two frosty mugs of India Beer, a traditional Newfoundland lager. Walking over to the fishing net, he then pops a couple of chunks of the berg into our beers.
“That’s 10,000-year-old ice,” he exclaims, as we slowly sail back to harbour, toasting the Explorer, the heat and a beautiful day spent on ice. Tim Johnson was a guest of the Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Tourism, which didn’t review or approve this story.