The m/v Arctic Sunrise

The m/v Arctic Sunrise is the latest addition to Greenpeace's fleet. The ship has spent most of its life in icy polar seas. It started its Greenpeace life campaigning against oil pollution in the North At the end of 1996, however, the ship was prepared for its first visit to the Antarctic, and its first ice work for Greenpeace.

Documenting Climate Change in Antarctica

In January of 1997 the m/v Arctic Sunrise departed southern Argentina, bound for the frozen continent of Antarctica. The focus of this month long expedition was to document emerging evidence of human-induced climate change, including the apparently increasing instability of Antarctic ice shelves.

Over the last 50 years, temperatures in the vicinity of the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed by 2.5 degrees C - much faster than the global average. Simultaneously, vast areas of the large ice masses surrounding the coastlines of the Antarctic Peninsula have begun to disintegrate.

The m/v Arctic Sunrise, an ice-breaking vessel, and her crew of 32, set off from a tiny town on the tip of Argentina called Ushuaia, known as `al fin del mundo' - at the end of the earth' - to investigate the extent of the ice collapse.

The ship sailed through waters that only recently were impenetrable ice. The 4,200 square kilometer, 300 meter thick Larsen-A ice shelf collapsed in January 1995. Martina Krueger, a campaigner aboard the ship, wrote in her diary:

" Ice shelves are made up of continental ice and glaciers which are slowly floating into the sea. This is where icebergs come from - they break off in big chunks at the front as ice is pushed down from the land. But because of the warmer temperatures this balance has been disrupted. Deep rifts appeared in the ice and in January 1995 what was left of the ice sheet collapsed over a period of just fifty days...It was an eerie feeling to think that just over two years ago, people were walking 30 meters above us on what then seemed impermeable ice."

Traveling south to the Larsen-B ice shelf, Greenpeace found huge cracks in the ice which suggest that this shelf, built up over thousands of years, may also soon collapse. A report from the first flyover of the area indicated:

"One big rift [we] followed begins right at the ice front and continues to the horizon. Its width is about 6-8 meters, widening to 20-30 meters. The crack is about 30 meters deep (to sea level) and at the bottom of the crack it is possible to see big rocks of ice along its valley."

In April of 1998, satellite imagery revealed that a 200 square kilmoter portion of the Larsen-B shelf had disintegrated into the sea. The evidence of human civilisation's impact on the global climate continues to accumulate.

On to the Arctic

In July 1997 the m/v Arctic Sunrise sailed from Vancouver to Alaska to continue Greenpeace's documentation of climate change in the polar regions. The Western Arctic (western Arctic Canada, Alaska and eastern Siberia, and the Bering, Beaufort and Chukchi Seas) is another one of the fastest warming parts of the globe, experiencing warming of almost one degree Celsius per decade for the past three decades.

The expedition's first stop was in the Gulf of Alaska at the Bering Glacier. The Bering is the world's largest temperate or 'mountain' glacier. Like most of the world's temperate glaciers, the Bering is losing both mass and extent at a dramatic rate in response to warmer temperatures over recent decades, having retreated 10-12 kilometers, and decreased in area by about 130 square kilometers.

Next, the ship sailed to the Kenai peninsula, where campaigners working with local field scientists documented the devastation of spruce forests by the spruce bark beetle. Although this insect has been a feature of south-central Alaska's forests for many years, warmer temperatures in recent decades have sped up the beetle's reproductive cycle, killing 30 million trees in 1996 alone, and the outbreak now covers more than 1 million acres.

During the second half of July the ship and crew visited 8 communities in the Bering and Chukchi Seas: Savoonga and Gambell on St. Lawrence Island, Wales on the edge of the Bering Strait, Kotzebue and Deering in Kotzebue Sound, and Point Hope, Point Lay and Wainwright on the Chukchi coast. The purpose of these visits was to collect testimonies from Alaska Natives based on their observations of the impacts of climate change on their daily lives. In recent years, traditional knowledge of the environment has gained new stature in scientific circles; and since scientists have been paying attention, they have learned much and have often been pointed in the direction of 'new' discoveries based on traditional knowledge. The results of these findings will be published in the summer of 1998.

In August, the m/v Arctic Sunrise rounded Point Barrow into the Beaufort Sea with two major objectives: one, to document impacts to the ice-edge environment from climate change; and two, to highlight both the global and local environmental impacts from existing and proposed oil developments both on and offshore of Alaska's North Slope.

Encounters with numerous walrus, seals and polar bears reminded the crew and campaigners aboard the m/v Arctic Sunrise how dependent the wildlife of the Arctic are upon the ice edge environment. The shrinking polar ice cap in a warming world does not bode well for their future.

Neither does the intensive oil exploration and development in the area around Prudhoe Bay. After the completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 1977, the onshore oil fields around Prudhoe Bay have spread south, east, west; and now they threaten to spread north, into the Beaufort Sea. Developing offshore oilfields is dangerous under any circumstances In the offshore environment of the Arctic sea ice, storms, and extreme temperatures create some of the most hazardous conditions on the face of the planet. The risks associated with these developments seem foolhardy, both from the point of view of the potential local environmental damage, and the need to wean human civilisation from its addiction to fossil fuels in the face of the mounting evidence of human-induced climate change. Nonethless, British Petroleum, ARCO and a handful of other companies continue to pursue offshore oil and gas production from Canada across to Siberia.

Greenpeace and the m/v Arctic Sunrise will return to the Arctic during 1998 to continue to document the human, physical and biological impacts of climate change; and will return to the Beaufort Sea to bear witness and continue the campaign to stop the offshore oil developments that threaten both the local environment and which will add to the reserves of oil that we cannot afford to burn.

Arctic Sunrise Technical Specifications	Crew
Type of ship: motor yacht - formerly seismic research vessel	Captain: Arne Sørenson - 52, Denmark
Former name: Polarbjorn	1st Mate: Frank Kamp - 35, NL
Port of registry: Amsterdam	2nd Mate: Lena Sierakowska - 35, UK
Call sign: PCTK	3rd Mate: Paul Ruzycki - 33, Canada
Class: DNV 1A1 icebreaker, EO	Chief Eng: Jan Madsen - 37, Denmark
Built: 1975, AS Vaagen Werft	1st Eng: Maarten Jansens - 31, NL
Length: 49.62m	Elec. Eng: Rachel Higgs - 35, Australia
Beam: 11.50m	Radio Op: Neil Brewster - 34, Australia
Draught: 5.30m	Bosun: Eddie McPartlin - 53, UK
Main engine: MAK 9M452AK - 2945hp	Cook: Martin Freimuller - 35, Swiss
Air Draught: 25m	Cook: Sarah McNab - 33, NZ
Gross tonnage: 949	Medic: Beth Higgs - 36, Australia
Net tonnage: 284	Deck: Karen Foley - 41, UK
Aux engines: 2 X Deutz BF6M&16 208hp	Deck: Phil Lloyd - 30, Australia
Bow thruster: 400 hp	Deck: Yaseu Ito - 27, Japan
Stern thruster: 400 hp	Pilot: Paula Huckleberry - 48, USA
Accommodation: 30 persons	Int'l Coord: Steve Sawyer - 41, USA