Hi, this is Helen Mackie from Lochgilphead High School, Argyll, Scotland with an attempt to get across my feelings of the Schools on Board programme so far.
Here I am, on board the “Amundsen” in the Beaufort Sea (N70 W121) drifting with the ice in the sea, so our position changes slightly all the time, at the end of my first week in Canada.
I came with one testable theory, and one hope.

My theory is related to social interactions :
Rural communities anywhere on the globe will open themselves to strangers who do not wish to alter or criticise them.

My hope:
To be part of current scientific research from sampling to collecting data, and that the research would encompass all three sciences and geography.

So, what has my first week in Canada given me?
The Inuvik people are friendly, helpful and open. The students that I've met from Samuel Hearne Secondary School are powerful young adults. They have strong views, and voice them well. They do not want to lose their roots or their environment. Like most schools Samuel Hearne has a Student Council, but they also have a student representative on the Town Council! We have also had the opportunity to meet with members representing the Inuvialuit Settlement Region and the Gwitch'in Tribal Council who are concerned about how the actions of distant populations are impacting on their lifestyle and their well being. (Our pollutants, airborne to the polar regions, enter food chains and accumulate in the animals that they hunt.) On a social level our students and the SHSS students get on well.

As a generalisation the folk “feel” just like Argyll folk, and they've both made quite an impact on me! So far my theory holds good!

As for science and my hopes – tremendous!
I used to be a pollution monitoring officer, and this work in the Canadian Arctic is seriously cutting edge stuff! I shall follow their progress through the years with anticipation, and try to build most of it into my teaching.

I am fulfilling a childhood dream here (7years old), after seeing a film about Eskimos, ( back then we knew very little about the different indigenous peoples of the Arctic region ) and I'm wondering whether that was shown to us for International Polar Year 1957!

Je suis Véronique Giard et je demeure à Contrecœur, une ville près de Montréal, Québec, Canada. J’enseigne la chimie et la biologie au Collège Français de Longueuil. Présentement, je vis le rêve de ma vie ! J’ai l’opportunité d’explorer les sciences de l’Arctique dans le Golfe d’Amundsen dans l’Arctique de l’Ouest.
Accompagnée de David Barber, scientifique en chef de la mission CFL, Andrea Rossnagel, étudiante de l’Université du Manitoba et de David MacFadyen, élève écossais de niveau secondaire, nous avons mesuré la température et la conductibilité (la salinité) de l’eau à différentes profondeurs dans l’océan Arctique.
Pour commencer, nous devions percer un trou à l’aide d’une perceuse, il s’agit du même instrument que l’on utilise pour la pêche sur la glace (pêche blanche). Ensuite, nous devions installer la sonde au lecteur CTD (conductibility-temperature-depth) et nous devions les plonger dans l’océan. Ce même lecteur enregistre les données et celles-ci seront analysées plus tard dans les laboratoires. Du même coup, nous devions noter les paramètres physiques de la météorologie  ainsi que les coordonnées géographiques du site étudié.
Voici nos données pour cette première station d’analyse :
Épaisseur de la neige : 1cm et celle-ci est principalement composée de fleurs givrées (traduction libre du terme anglais Frost Flowers)
Épaisseur de la glace : 17 cm
Météo : Journée ensoleillée avec un ciel sans nuages

Latitude : N 70⁰35.817’
Longitude : W 121⁰51.847’



Véronique, David et Andrea sur le Skippy Boat

Hey,
Paulina is back!

Everything is fine up here and today has been really busy.
I started my morning at the moon pool, watching the scientists sampling water. The reason for sampling was to examine zooplanktons for further investigations.

After breakfast we had some time for planning our presentation. The presentation is going to be presented in two schools before we get back home and then every one has a responsibility to share it for other people in their home town when we come back home.

I ate my lunch very quickly because I was in a hurry to the moon pool for my second time this day. This time I was there alone with Rodd Liang, a Manitoba student, from Team #2. It was very, very interesting and also very fun! Rodd works with the DOC (Disolved Organic Carbon) in the water so we had to filtrate the water from the Rosetta in to like 30 small bottles.
Rosetta is the machine you put down in the water through the ship. It goes down to the bottom and fills its 24 bottles with water from different depths.

So we were using syringes which we first had to clean three times before we used it. This we had to do before every 24 bottles! It sounds kind of boring but it wasn’t. You get wet even if you are a pro of cleaning and filling syringes, and I’m not, so I can tell you I was kind of wet after my time in there.

In the syringes there is a filter paper. This filter paper had burned for several hours, just to get the carbon away from it. They are interesting in the carbon only from the water so all carbon from different things can’t be in touch. That’s why we also were in need of plastic gloves. It’s an experiment were everything needs to be very clean.

Hey my name is David MacFadyen and I go to Lochgilphead High School in Argyll and Bute on the west coast of Scotland.
Today was a very busy day and I will mention some of my highlights of the day. All of us went out on to the ice in the morning and were able to help out with the scientists in their sampling. I was fortunate to be helping out Sabino Del Vento who is stationed at Lancaster University in England. He is investigating organic contaminants and the samples we were taking today were to find perfluorinated compounds. The pollutants are bi-products from industry and are found in many things for example polystyrene cups and the foam that is used by fire fighters. They are very important compounds to measure as they have adverse affects on all living organisms. To do this we had to bore a hole in the ice which is about one and a half metres thick so there is not too great a chance of us falling through. After cutting a hole in the ice we used a device called a Niskin Bottle to collect the water samples at different depths. It was very interesting to do and Sabino was very informative. We took samples for Monika Pucko as well who is investigating pesticides in the water.



Real Ice Hockey
In the afternoon almost everyone converged on the ice for a mass game of hockey. It was made very difficult as we were all wearing massive boots! The game in the end was not called off because of the snow or the strong wind but.... a crack in the ice! So we don't know if anyone will be going out on the ice tomorrow it will depend on how the crack and weather is doing. The winner of the game was Team Awesome it was no contest it was like Scotland versus France at football it was just far too easy.
All of the Schools on Board students left the game apart from Cameron and I even though I have never played the sport in my life but it is a bit like Shinty so it was not too hard. It seemed to be enjoyed by everyone and it was a welcomed break for all of the scientists and the crew on board. It wasn't quite the Stanley Cup but it was a really good game.

My name is Mats Svensson and I live in Landskrona in the south of Sweden. I teach biology and marine biology at Allvar Gullstrandgymnasiet. Today I spent almost three hours on the ice with the contaminants group, team 8. The weather was fair to us with temperatures around the -16 degrees and only moderate winds. Today’s mission was to assist with the core drilling. Core drilling is for extracting a vertical sample of the ice in which you measure your desired parameters. The contaminants group, lead by Debbie Armstrong from University of Manitoba, measures contaminants in the air, water, algae, snow, zooplankton, fish as well as in the ice. Brine is a salty fluid that drains from the ice and when core holes are left empty the brine is collected and analysed for contaminants.

A Scandinavian core drilling fight in front of the Amundsen where Paulina Wallentin Andersson from Sweden leads by some ten centimetres ahead of Marit Haugen from Norway.

A CTD (conductivity-temperature-depth) device was also deployed by Andrea Rossnagel from University of Manitoba. These measurements are particularly interesting from a productivity point of view as PAR (photosyntetically active radiation) also is measured. Compared to a non frozen ocean the PAR-depth is a lot shallower due to the ice and snow absorbing the light. At this location the ice is approximately 130 cm thick and depending on the amount of snow cover the absorption of the light varies. Today the water column down to 60 meters was measured and the temperature in the ice ranged from -1.76 degrees Celcius at 5 cm above the ice/water interface to -10.23 degrees at 5 cm below the ice/snow interface. At the same time the snow temperature decreased from -10.25 degrees at the ice/snow interface to -7.95 degrees at the snow/air interface. Another application of the CTD is of course as a measuring device for oceanographic purposes. During the course of the season as the ice melts a change in salinity will be evident.

Extracting the core from the ice is a skilfull work demanding a great deal of concentration as well as some really warm clothes. Erin Collins from Winnipeg is preparing the plastic bag for the core taken up by Monika Pucko from University of Manitoba.

Hi everyone!
This is Paulina Wallentin Andersson, student from Sweden, and Chris Queisser, teacher from Germany. We are right now settled at the Amundsen. It’s really, really cool to be here!

Today brought a lot of good and interesting things. We all have built a Thermocouple which is an instrument that can measure air, snow and ice temperatures. We separated into three groups and designed our own thermocouples. Our thermocouples consisted of Thermocouple wires, sticks, glue, skipping rope, and straws.
The wire is made of 2 strands. One strand is made of copper (Cu) and the other is made of any another silver colored metal. When these two metals touch, electrons begin to flow between them. This flow of electrons will give you a voltage. The warmer the wire is the faster the electrons move and that leads to a higher voltage. This gives us a relationship to measure temperature via the measurement of voltage.
Of course we didn’t do all these calculations ourselves. We used an instrument called Micrologger and it gave us the temperature in less than 2 seconds.
We will now take measurements from our instruments three times per day. We did our first measurements today with some help from scientists Andrea Rossnagel and Rodd Laing from Team #2. We measured the temperature in the air and in different depths in the snow and the ice.
We all needed to be very creative and we certainly were. The three thermocouples received names like “Scandinavian Stars”, “CCNC (Canadian Couple N Chris)” and “Kilts on the ice”.
It was minus 14 degrees Celsius and the speed of the wind was 27 km/h. So, to warm up me (Paulina), Natalie and Marit showed off, not only our break dancing skills, but also our own made up creative dance on the ice. Overall it was a great day.

Hej allihopa!
Detta ar Paulina Wallentin Andersson, elev fran Sverige, och Chris Queisser, larare fran Tyskland. Vi befinner oss just nu pa Amundsen. Det ar riktigt kul att vara har!
Dagen har medfort manga intressanta saker. Vi har byggt Thermocouples, vilket ar ett instrument som mater temperaturen I luft, sno och is. Vi var uppdelade I tre grupper dar vi designade och byggde vara instrument. Var thermocouple bestod av saker som sladdar, pinnar, klister, hopprep och sugror.
Sladden bestar av tva metalltradar. Den ena traden ar gjord av koppar (Cu) och den andra utav nagon annan silvertackt metall. Nar dessa tva metaller mots borjar elektroner att fara mellan dem. Flodet av elektroner ger oss en spanning mellan andarna. Ju varmare sladden ar, desto fortare forflyttas elektronerna. Detta leder till en hogre spanning. Detta ger oss ett forhallande som gor att vi kan mata temperaturen via matningar av spanningen.
Saklart utforde vi inte utrakningarna sjalv, utan overlamnade istallet jobbet till ett instrument som kallas for Micrologger. Den raknar ut temperaturen pa mindre an 2 sekunder.
Vi ska hadanefter ta matningar tre ganger om dagen. Vi gjorde vara forsta matningar idag med hjalp utav Andrea Rossnagel och Rodd Laing, tva forskare fran team #2. Vi matte temperaturen I luften och pa olika djup I snon och I isen.
Vi var tvungna att vara valdigt kreativa nar vi byggde vara thermocouples, och det var vi verkligen! Vara tre thermocuples fick namn som “Scandinavian Stars”, “CCNC (Canadian Couple N Chris)” and “Kilts on the ice”.
Det var -14 grader Celcius I luften och vinden var cirka 27 km/h. Sa for att halla varmen uppe sa visade Jag (Paulina), Natalie och Marit upp, inte bara var utomordentliga break dance, utan aven var egen-gjorda Iniutdans, ute pa isen. Sammanfattningsvis sa var det en utomordentlig dag!

Just press (Play) to view....

Going onto the ice
Today was the day we had all been waiting for, the day we board the ship! However, unlike most groups we received a special send off to the ship. It was an official send off from Canada’s own Governor General Michaelle Jean. Our group woke up this morning and made our way to Samuel Hearne Secondary School (SHSS) to meet her excellence. When she arrived at the school she graciously took the time to talk to each and every one of us. She the reminded us of the privilege we have received to be apart of this experience and to enjoy every second of it. The photo below shows her excellence speaking with Cameron and myself (Natalie). She wished us the best of luck and we said our goodbyes to her and to our friends from SHSS.

Next stop; the CCGS Amundsen. Our charter left the runway in Inuvik at 1:30pm. For most of us it was the first time being in such a small plane. The view was amazing. It was incredibly noisy but we all managed to sneak in a nap. The feeling of the plane decsending woke my group up instantly. We were all more than anxious to see the ship for the first time.
At first all we could see was ice and a few cracks with open water. Then, we saw it. From a distance it was just a little red spot, but we all thought it was phenomenal. We landed and our first view of the Amundsen in person was amazing. We have heard so much about the Amundsen and now it was right in front of our eyes. The feeling of excitement was incredible!

Ut i ishavet
I dag kom endeleg dagen vi har venta på. Dagen då vi skulle opp til båten i ishavet. I motsetning til dei fleste som flyg opp hit fekk vi ei heilt spesiell avskjedshelsing i Inuvik då Canada sin General guvernør Michaelle Jean sendte oss av garde med gode helsingar. Då vi vakna I dag tideleg gjekk vi bort til Samuel Hearne Secondary School, og prata med våre nye venner frå dagen før. Der stod vi høgtideleg oppstilte medan generalguvernøren (Dronninga av England sin representant I Canada) tok seg tid til å helse på og snakke med oss alle.

Så var det på tide å reise til isbrytaren Amundsen. Me reiste I to grupper med små twin otter fly. Vi reiste frå Inuvik flyplass ca kl 1:30. For dei fleste av oss var det fyrste gong på eit slikt lite fly, men alle sov mesteparten av dei to timane flyturen over isen varte. Det var spennande å sjå den store båten for fyrste gong. Det var fantastisk å sirkle inn over den fastfrosne isbrytaren som vi hadde høyrt så mykje om. Dei som framleis sov bråvakna av landinga på isen .
Me vart køyrt frå landingsstripa til båten med snøskuterar, fekk installert oss på romma våre, og fant oss fort til rette i den venlege atmosfæren om bord. Maten er fransk og den er super. Etter kveldsmaten tok sikkerhetsoffiseren Vincent oss med på ein runde på båten. Det var eit fint høve til å sjå mesteparten av skipet. Han var flink til å forklare. Då det var gjort fekk vi være med på eit møte som forskarane ombord hadde, der dei diskuterte planane sine for neste dag. Både vi og forskarane sa litt om oss sjølve og vi fekk eit godt inntrykk av kva forsking som skjer om bord. Alle gledar seg til å arbeide saman med forskarane både på båten og ute på isen dei neste seks dagane.

My name is Cameron MacDonald and I am the student from Inuvik that is going on the Schools on Board Field Program. Today was the first day that I was able to spend a good deal of time with the rest of the group.

We went to Samuel Hearne Secondary School here in Inuvik this morning. Some of the science classes had put together an event with multiple presentations. The first speakers were two representatives from the MacKenzie gas project who came and talked to us about what was happening with the proposed gas line to be put in the MacKenzie delta region. There were many questions about the project and the possible effects that it may cause. Another presentation was an employee from Parks Canada who gave us information about the three national parks that are located in parts of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon. A group of students then preformed some traditional Inuit drum dances and the Gwitch'in language teacher, Mrs. Charlie, preformed a Gwitch'in jig. Some of the other speakers at the event were Debra English, a group known as Arctic Voices, and the premier of the Northwest Territories, Floyd Roland. All of the presentations were very interesting and the other students on the trip said that my classmates are very friendly.

In the afternoon we went to a place called Arctic Chalet to go dog sledding. We broke up into two groups and went six at a time. We were given instructions on how to drive a team properly and what to do if our sled tips over, HANG ON! It was the first time any of us have gone dog sledding before, even for myself who has lived in Inuvik for more than ten years. It was a great experience and everyone had a great time.

In the evening we went back to Samuel Hearne Secondary School to watch two movies that had to do with the north. The first movie was called "Being Caribou." It was a documentary about a recently married couple that had the dream of following a herd of caribou to their calving ground and back again. The second movie was called "Thin Ice." It was a documentary about the people in the eastern arctic of Canada and how they see the land and climate change. "Thin Ice" was a very interesting film that was also very informative about the types of climate change that the people in the eastern arctic have seen and experienced.

It was a great day and I got to know the other people in the group more and I'm looking forwards to spending the next week on the icebreaker with them.

Cameron MacDonald

Hello! This is our (Erin and Marot’s) dispatch on April 15, 2008, spent in Inuvik, NWT.

Today was our first day in Inuvik! We tried to cram in as many activities as possible in order to experience the rich and unique culture of the Inuit people. Walking to our numerous destinations, we were amazed to discover that every car stopped for us when we made to cross the street!

Our priority that day was to take part in a meeting with ‘Team Ten’ of the CFL Study: Traditional Knowledge of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead. Before our meeting, we walked around the Inuvialuit Regional Corporation (IRC) Building, and gazed at the many forms of art and culture that decorated the hallways. We were amazed with the care and talent that were needed to create the beautiful soapstone carvings, paintings, and symbolical displays.

During the meeting, we were treated to a lunch of traditional Inuit cuisine, featuring bannock, reindeer stew, and the all-popular muktuk (whale blubber). The board of Team Ten delivered an effective, but shocking, presentation concerning the drastic effects of the consequences of climate change in Northern communities. They spoke of the appearances of new species, like blue heron and hummingbirds, the thinning ice, changing hunting seasons, and a decline of important animal populations. We all learned from these people the true effects of the changing planet and realized the enormous ignorance of those that couldn’t bear witness to this disaster through the eyes of the Northern peoples.

A highlight of the day was getting to see muskox, seals, Arctic foxes, and a whale stomach-at the cultural centre! Our guide was very knowledgeable and explained to us the difference between permafrost and pingos. As well, she told us of the ‘Beluga Jamboree’ and the Made Trapper of the Northwest Territories!

We all learned a lot about Northern culture, an experience which less than five percent of all Canadians have. We felt enormously privileged as deep gratitude for the people of Inuvik, who made us feel at home.