97 feet above sea level, in a small room on top of a pole, Tahnee Zacanno looks out over the Arctic sea ice. With the throttle in one hand and the wheel in the other, she guides the 420 foot icebreaker Healy...

Carin Ashjian studies tiny animals in the Arctic Ocean. These zooplankton are the vital link in the food chain between the plant phytoplankton, which harvest the suns energy and turn it into food, and the...

When Tanja Schollmeier was deciding what animals to study for her masters in marine, she by-passed some more obvious choices, dolphins, whales, turtles, and went straight for some of the lesser known creatures...

Working on the sea ice comes with a unique set of risks: the cold, deep drifting snow, a steep gangway from the Healy, and even the threat of a wandering polar bear. Add to this the possibility that someone...

First they thought we were too late, now the worry is spreading amongst the science party that we are too early. For the scientists aboard the Healy, the Arctic spring is yet to have sprung. Science is...

It’s late May. The snow and ice are thick over the Arctic Ocean. The water is dark as can be. The scientists aboard the Healy are positioning themselves and waiting for the start of the melt season when they...

Chelsea Clarke delicately adds a core to the creation. A jumble of ruined columns rise a foot or so from the thick snow cover. It looks partly like a complex network of bridges, partly like the decaying...

Juan Rivera, Bosun of the Healy, is telling me that the ship is no longer attached to the ice. It has broken away and we’ve been abandoned on the sprawling wasteland of a frozen Arctic Ocean with only...

Progress through ice is never all that smooth. When breaking ice continuously, the Healy forces its colossal mass up onto the floe with a maximal 30,000 horsepower before crashing down through the ice....

The Arctic Spring Expedition is passing through the Bering Strait. This 80km wide strait between Russia and the US is the Pacific gateway to the Arctic Ocean. Any water that wants to enter the Arctic has to...