Greenland Blog

                                            July and August 2012

I have always been fascinated by the Arctic with its tales of heroism, endurance and stupidity.  Beyond that I am attracted to the lure of pristine wilderness, perhaps no longer untouched by civilization, but at least not conquered by it. More than ever in the past, it is crucial to understand the changes taking place in the Arctic.The Arctic holds many secrets to what is in store for the future of civilization, and bears the scars of some of our significant failures.  Models indicate that melting ice will likely change the ocean circulation pattern causing dramatic climate change in northern Europe and Siberia.  Ice cores from the Greenland ice cap indicate that this change has happened before and the shift can take place in as

little as 10 years.  On our two crossings between Greenland and Canada, we collected water samples for John Smith, head of the Atlantic Environmental Radioactivity Unit at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Halifax. He is using radioactive iodine as a tracer to track Arctic Ocean circulation to gain more knowledge about the currents and shed light on  how disruptive such an alteration in the currents might be and over what time period it might occur.  

In Labrador the elevated temperatures of the last decade have played a critical role in the dramatic decline of the caribou herds from 250,000 animals ten years ago to 25,000 surviving today.  Changes in the ice patterns are causing dislocation in the seal populations which effects the whole ecosystem dependent on seals.  Other issues such as disease in seals may be related to climate change, but at the moment remain unexplained.  What is startling is the speed at which all these changes are taking place.

The oceans are neither infinite nor inexhaustible. Once an ecosystem is damaged its recovery is slow and may never be complete.  The Canadian Coast from Nova Scotia to Labrador is dotted with relics of a once flourishing cod fishery including abandoned boats, villages and processing plants.  The scale of the early cod fishery is mindboggling.  Now it is almost gone and with a few exceptions there is little evidence that the fish populations are recovering.  The story of the cod fishery should stand as a stark warning to not deplete other living resources to the point that they cannot recover, but it is only partially heeded. Most of the worlds fisheries are over-fished and while the scientists are well aware of the danger, economic and political forces often overrule logic and quotas are set too high or ignored.