Completing the NW Passage
Journey with National Geographic photographer Richard Olsenius along the fabled Northwest Passage. Olsenius was on the first American yacht to transit the Passage and the first ever to cross West to East. Explore with Richard as he hunts with Inuit, travels with researchers and studies the surge in mineral and oil exploration. This is available in either iBook or hard-cover.
Baffin Island
The 24-hour daylight of the arctic summer gave a surrealistic feeling to normal activities and threw off my sense of timing. The sounds of Inuit children playing kickball at 3 a.m. disrupted my sleep. Yet the best light of the day for photography was the four to five hours of extended twilight after midnight when the low sun drew out the colors of the landscape. It was also the safest time to travel on the melting, shifting ice.
Gjoa Haven
Each summer hunters pack their snowmobiles for a journey to the floe edge of Baffin Bay to hunt the narwhal. Our trip would take at least two weeks, but with round-the-clock sunshine weakening the ice, no one knew how long the ice would be safe for travel. Many hunters had already returned, afraid of being stranded on a shifting ice flow.
Scientists Tagging Polar Bears
The high Arctic has a wide variety of animals who have learned to adapt to the long hard winters above the Arctic Circle. The list of animals includes, Muskox, Ptarmigan, Arctic Fox, Narwhals, Bowhead whales, countless species of birds and landlocked fish such as the Arctic Char.
Open ice along the Northwest Passage
Arctic Ice has been a formidable barrier to adventures and trade for hundreds of years. But scientists have raised the alarm bells on the rapid loss of Arctic ice over the last decade or so. Today, the impenetrable Northwest Passage is being crossed by a number of private and commercial boats. But the loss of ice cover has dramatic effects on our Earth’s climate and only now are we seeing the consequences of this loss.
OIl exploration along NW Passage
Seismic crews from Canada and the United States crisscrossed the landscape, prospecting for oil and gas deposits to meet growing energy demands. From the air, their grids scarred the tundra like an intricate game of tic-tac-toe. I wondered how energy development might affect the delicate tundra, wildlife and native communities? Tanker traffic and any oil spills would have a major impact on whales and other sea life along the Passage.