Blue Futures Pathways Expedition: Update Three
At 65 years old, the Polar Prince has lived a long, hard-working life. Sometime around our expedition’s tenth day, its years and mileage caught up with us in the form of electrical issues, causing our southerly pace to slow to a crawl, but we nevertheless made it to Nain, Labrador. Luckily, while work on the capricious Arctic veteran was carried out, we carried on by collecting and processing more eDNA samples, operating the ROVs we constructed earlier in the trip, piloting drones, deploying a hydrophone, picking up garbage along the beach, and taking a cold swim in a nearby lake. The winds that had picked up throughout the day made for an entertaining return to our fickle, floating home that evening.
“The way back from shore on the zodiac was very treacherous and bumpy, and everyone was holding on, but it was really fun, and it was a cool experience.”
– Safe AbuJayyab; Saint John, New Brunswick
The following days’ early morning maneuvers to test out provisional repairs ended as quickly as they started, signalling that we’d be spending another day in Nain. Again, we broke off into groups, with some continuing their drone piloting lessons, others collecting water samples, divers in the water and a team sorting the beach plastics and garbage collected the day before. The real highlight of the day was that night when the aurora borealis put on a fantastic late-night show for those willing to forgo sleep.
The tug of war between the ship’s repairs and our schedule ended the morning of our 12th expedition day when the decision was made to pull up the anchor by noon and proceed, albeit slowly, further down the coast. The decision left enough time for a quick morning hike up nearby Mt. Sophie, though for some, perhaps not quick enough given the swarms of mosquitoes and black flies that feasted on us indiscriminately.
As Nain disappeared into the layers of wildfire smoke that now blanketed the coastline, our energy was high. This was in part because we were once again moving and in part because of the afternoon’s activity: a ship-based take on The Amazing Race. Four teams had two and a half hours to test everything they’d learned on the expedition at 14 different stations, from navigation to salsa dancing.
Our voyage the next day through the grey smoke-filled expanse under a glaring orange sun was punctuated by workshops on Inuit land claims agreements and renewable energy and a late afternoon visit to the Gannet Islands Ecological Reserve, Labrador’s largest seabird breeding colony.
Thousands of puffins, guillemots, and other North Atlantic seabirds surrounded our zodiacs. The entire area was enveloped by an intense aroma that, according to one educator, smelled like “an old lobster trap.” After many photos and countless oohs and aahs later, we found ourselves back aboard the Polar Prince cruising further south through the last of the Labradorian waters before our final stretch of the expedition along the Newfoundland coast.