CAN THE ARCTIC REGION ADAPT TO GROWING OUTSIDE FORCES?
Increasing numbers of visitors, ships could strain already scarce resources
The mostawaited ship here this season wasn’t the 1,000-passenger Crystal Serenity that’s scheduled to arrive Sunday. Nor was it any of the other nine smaller, expedition ships carrying fewer than 200 passengers that had sched- uled stops.
It’s the annual “sea-lift” that everybody impatiently waited for. It comes at the end of August before ice fills Eclipse Sound, carrying a year’s worth of necessities ordered months earlier for everyone in the village of 1,600 on Canada’s largest island, Baffin Island.
It’s loaded with everything from toilet paper to replacement washing machines, from crucial parts for a snowmobile to “fresh pop.”
(Who knew that sugary, carbonated drinks go bad? Everyone here. The lack of it prompts them to approach strangers off expedition ships as they might a drug dealer: “Got any fresh pop?” I’m told the diet versions go flat after six months and the regular, after eight. And since it’s been almost a year since the last sea lift, everybody’s dwindled supply is off and the only alternative is to pay $4.25 for a can at the grocery store where it may or may not be off as well.)
Of course, everyone was aware that the first-ever, large, luxury liner was coming and views were mixed about its effect.
Some — like Sheena Akoomalik, the driving force between a cultural renewal and the cultural performances put on for visitors — hope it is the beginning of a tourism boom that will provide greater opportunities for artists, performers and small businesses, boosting an economy still largely dependent on traditional hunting and fishing.
Others, like Ivan Koonoo, a resource management technician, fear that it that could drain already scarce resources.
“Ships come in and they buy out all the groceries,” he says. “Then we don’t have any vegetables or milk for a few days.”
That’s not a common occurrence, says Aaron Lawton, operations manager for One Ocean Expedition. However, he says it did happen a couple of times when a French company bought up all the fresh produce and milk, leaving locals without for 10 days until the next flight came in from Montreal.
“They were completely unaware of the impact that had,” says Lawton. But it prompted other small-ship operators to bring their competitor into line because it put at risk all of the small ships’ access to these remote communities.
Unlike the Antarctic, which is governed by 28 consultative parties to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, there is no single governance structure for the Arctic.
Instead, who owns the Arctic is still a matter for considerable debate.
So while there are strict rules for Antarctic tourism operators including one that forbids any ships with more than 110 passengers from going ashore, there are no rules for the Arctic.
Nunavut ports alone this year had 50 cruise ships, and one of the goals of its 2016-19 marine tourism management plan is to develop legislation and policies governing it by March 2018.
It recommended 32 conditions be placed on the Crystal Serenity (including how wastewater be treated and staying clear of swimming polar bears). But it also recommended that the federal government waive full environmental reviews for ships such as the Crystal Serenity to transit the Northwest Passage.
The Crystal Serenity did apply for a permit to travel through the Arctic Archipelago, despite the fact that the question of who owns the Arctic waters is an open debate. Canada argues that it is an internal waterway and, therefore, subject to Canadian laws and regulations. Others, including the Americans, don’t agree, arguing that it is an international waterway open to all.
The debate over Arctic waters, which until recently were either frozen or ice-choked for most of the year, is expected to intensify as the sea ice declines.
And the ice is definitely decreasing, a fact that Nunavut’s marine tourism management plan credits with increased tourism as well as interest generated by the 2014 discovery of HMS Erebus, one of Sir John Franklin’s lost ships.
Data show that as of Aug. 14, the extent of Arctic sea ice was the third lowest since satellite tracking began. The southern route through the Northwest Passage, for example, was almost completely free of ice.
What it’s meant already is a massive increase in shipping. Up until 2000, only 77 ships had ever gone through the Northwest Passage. Between 2000 and 2014, there were 143 including cargo ships, cruise ships and private yachts.
What’s “quite unusual” this year, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Center, is this year’s early ice retreat and ocean warming in the western Beaufort Sea and the western portion of the East Siberian Sea.
Thick, multi-year ice floes remained in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in mid-August. But NSIC says, “It remains to be seen whether they will survive the melt season.”
There’s no more dramatic illustration of this than NASA’s graphic that shows the global temperature changes from 1880 to 2015.
But to see what’s happened in the last 10 days, the Canadian Ice Service has an animated map of the ice melt at the federal environment department’s website (www.ec.gc.ca).
While tourism and the fate of polar bears has dominated much of the discussion about depleting sea ice in the south, for Koonoo and many others here it’s resource development that’s a more pressing concern.
Baffinland’s iron ore mine is at Mary River, 160 kilometres southwest of here. It is both the richest and most northern iron ore mine in the world and it began shipping ore last summer from Milne Inlet, which like Pond Inlet runs off Eclipse Sound.
In February, the company proposed increasing its shipping season to 10 months, using icebreakers. The Nunavut Impact Review Board is expected to hear the company’s phase two proposal in early 2017.
Koonoo isn’t opposed to the mine. It provides jobs for locals.
But he says, “Shipping through the winter is scary for me. It takes away the hunters’ route. There are also people from Arctic Bay living here, so it will make it hard for them to get back there to visit family and friends.”
As for the wildlife, “They might go somewhere else that’s a quieter and safer place.”
When Baffinland first talked about 10-month shipping last fall, the Pond Inlet hunters and trappers organization raised concerns, especially from the beginning of March until July when young seals are around and hunters travel by ice to get to them.
In addition to Mary River, there are three diamond mines and one gold mine operating in Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.
While it may seem that diminishing sea ice will lead to an explosion in resource exploration and development, it remains incredibly expensive as Baffinland is finding out. Its high costs have been complicated by the sharp drop in iron prices from US$135 a tonne in 2013 to US$41.25 in January.
Oil prices have also dropped precipitously from a high of US$151 a barrel in 2010 to US$46 at the end of August.
In June, Shell Canada relinquished its 30 offshore exploration permits covering 860,000 hectares in the Eastern Arctic to the Nature Conservancy of Canada, clearing the way for the federal government to establish a national marine protected area in Lancaster Sound.
The Sound, at the entrance to the Northwest Passage, is one of the richest marine mammal areas in the world because of its polynyas. Polynyas are open water areas in the sea ice that provide breathing holes for narwhals, belugas and other whales as well as the various species of seals that use the sea ice to “pup.”
Candice Sudlovenick is a conservation officer in Cambridge Bay. She grew up in Iqaluit, learning the old ways from her grandmother who was born in an igloo, as well as the new.
She and her fiancé, Angut Pedersen, get about 90 per cent of their meat from hunting and fishing. And Pedersen readily admits that Sudlovenick is the better hunter.
Sudlovenick also insisted that he follow the tradition of building her an igloo to prove that he was able to provide for her before she’d accept his proposal of marriage. That’s despite the fact that he was educated at Upper Canada College in Toronto and works for Polar Knowledge Canada, which managed the Canadian High Arctic Research Station in Cambridge Bay.
The pair are both optimistic about the future — even a future with less ice.
“We (the Inuit) have always adapted,” says Sudlovenick. “And we will continue to adapt as long as we are able to keep our traditional ways.”
Both agree that education is key to that, which is why the Nunavut government pays the full cost of post-secondary schooling for all of its citizens. But with only 35 per cent of students graduating from high school, the question is the same for the Inuit as well as other species dependent on the ice: Will they be able to adapt quickly enough?
We will continue to adapt as long as we are able to keep our traditional ways. Shipping through the winter is scary for me. It takes away the hunters’ route.