Nothern part of Severny Island, RussiaSentinel-2 satellite image acquired in August 2020
source Iban Amestoy
Saturday, October 23, 2021
Friday, October 22, 2021
Ancient with a dash of modern: we joined the Royal Navy to find there's little new in naval navigation
From The Register by Gareth Corfield
Following the Fleet Navigating Officers' course
The art of not driving your warship into the coast or the seabed is a curious blend of the ancient and the very modern, as The Regdiscovered while observing the Royal Navy's Fleet Navigating Officers' (FNO) course.
Safe navigation at sea is vital for all mariners and the Admiralty manual of navigation captures centuries of @RoyalNavy experience in this field.
Held aboard HMS Severn, "sea week" of the FNO course involves taking students fresh from classroom training and putting them on the bridge of a real live ship – and then watching them navigate through progressively harder real-life challenges.
"It's about finding where the students' capacity limit is," FNO instructor Lieutenant Commander Mark Raeburn told The Register.
Safety comes first: the Navy isn't interested in having navigators who can't keep up with the pressures and volume of information during pilotage close to shore – or near enemy minefields.
"It's about finding where the students' capacity limit is," FNO instructor Lieutenant Commander Mark Raeburn told The Register.
Safety comes first: the Navy isn't interested in having navigators who can't keep up with the pressures and volume of information during pilotage close to shore – or near enemy minefields.
So the student navigator hopes, anyway.
Driving (all of the officers we spoke to aboard Severn referred to it as driving and not sailing or steaming) a warship, as we reported during the course itself, is a highly skilled art that depends on precisely planning what you want the ship to do – and then having a clear enough mind to modify that plan on the fly depending on what the outside world is doing.
Second Officer Will Salloway, 26, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary* student on the FNO course, told The Register: "There's a lot of planning to do in a short timeframe.
That can be quite tough, coming out with a safe plan which has everything you need in it while being able to manage the pressures… you spend three hours on bridge managing the runs, on top of that and planning you've gotta eat and sleep."
"It's probably 20 times as much planning to execution."
Bobbin' on the oggin'
The essence of the FNO course is safely taking the ship to and from an anchorage, or navigating through tricky inshore waters, while maintaining appropriate safety margins.
For a surface ship this means staying away from a not-quite-imaginary line of critical importance: the Limiting Danger Line, or LDL.
The LDL is a depth that must never be passed in case the ship runs aground.
It's calculated by adding the ship's keel depth plus the squat for her planned speed** plus a margin on top, and then drawing "do not cross" lines on the chart.
Each FNO student plans and carries out six live navigation runs in control of the Severn: three "development" passages with FNO instructors coaching them throughout and giving them feedback, and three exam runs where assessors specially embarked for the course quietly watch the students going through their paces and decide if they pass or fail.
The ship herself travelled along Britain's south coast, dipped in and out of Plymouth and then dropped south to the Channel Islands' large tides and tidal stream variations before returning to her home base at Portsmouth.
The course concentrates on navigating a ship without GPS.
Taking away the external you-are-here service leaves the navigator aboard Severn with three manually sighted gyro-compasses*** and the heart of naval navigation, the Warship Electronic Chart Display and Information System (WECDIS, pronounced by all as "weck-diss").
Naval pilotage means planning a precise track from a position out at sea to an anchorage – or from an anchorage back out to sea, following a marked channel or passing through an area with a strong tidal stream and lots of other maritime traffic.
The navigator then keeps the ship to within yards of her planned track and turning points along the track.
On top of that, the navigator also plans wheel-over points; the spot where the wheel must be turned to a set angle so the ship precisely meets the next planned leg.
In this regard, naval pilotage planning is an exacting science.
Contact with the real world's weather and tides introduces an element of "fun" as one instructor whimsically observed.
For the student navigator, fixing your position means putting two of your fellow students on the external gyro-compasses to call out bearings, a third on the surface radar and a fourth on the WECDIS console, mounted in Severn behind the central gyro-compass on the ship's pelorus.
That team then works the maths and the technology together, all in perfect harmony with the navigator's prepared passage plan.
Taking bearings off shore landmarks or nautical navigation marks (lighthouses and prominent buildings by day, flashing lights by night) with a gyro-compass hasn't changed much since compasses were introduced to seafaring: you look down the compass towards the mark, read off the bearing and record it.
Severn's concession to modernity is that her gyro-compasses have a modest internal telescope and illumination for night readings.
Yet in modern naval navigation, that ancient art of eyeballing the bearings is married to a modern computer system that constantly integrates and updates bearings to produce a live plot of where the ship ought to be.
It's a curious blend of an old art with up-to-date technology that complements both: for eyes used to instantly seeing the answers to life, the universe and everything presented on a computer, the digital displays telling the bridge crew where the ship is located are curiously reassuring.
Reading bearings to navigation marks would be equally familiar to sailors from the mid-19th century.
During the course safety comes first: the captain and instructors can see a GPS-enabled WECDIS display showing precisely where the ship is, and can intervene if something unsafe is about to happen.
We've got windows – glass ones, not the operating system
Although the FNO course is usually loaded with eight students, during the week that El Reg joined the Severn we had just four: two from the surface fleet; one from submarines; and one from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA).
Severn's captain, Commander Philip Harper, mused that each student's professional naval experience brought something different to their navigational technique.
For example, submarine navigation normally takes place underwater, so submariner students on the FNO course tend to start off by gazing at the screens on the bridge instead of looking outside.
Lieutenant Jack Crallan, a 32-year-old submariner who was a physics teacher before joining the Navy, agreed: "Biggest difference for me is being able to see things! I'm usually looking at my notebook and listening to the numbers and not looking out of the window.
But on a submarine the only information you have is bearings."
Although the process of pilotage (navigation close to shore) is inherently mathematical, the FNO students insisted you didn't need to be a numerical genius to keep the ship safe ("I got a U in A-level maths," joked one).
Lieutenant Matt Cavill, 29, who has a degree in molecular cell biology, said of the above quick-reference tables: "When someone works out a distance off track or a distance to run, that's all done off a single bearing in their notebook most likely.
When someone works out a time to regain, or a distance to regain, then they are using mental maths but it's fairly basic – some people can do speed/distance/time [on the fly], it comes relatively easily to me.
I do have a note of easy numbers, though!"
Fellow student Lt Crallan added: "There are a lot of maths tricks as well.
We tend to do something of 12 or 15 or 30 very easily; that's the sine rule.
You can do trigonometry in your head if you pick the right numbers."
Staying in clear water
On the FNO course it's not enough to leave the maths to WECDIS.
From watching the navigation runs, it was clear that whoever was navigating was expected to use the electronic plot to help them form their own mental picture of where the ship was at any given moment, not as a crutch for leaning on.
To the non-nautical observer, RN pilotage is a bewildering verbal stream of bearings, marks, yards, chains, timings, and jargon.
The WECDIS operator is constantly updating bearings on his console behind the navigator, who occasionally darts from the pelorus to a bridge window or shouts "heads" so everyone in front of him ducks while he's taking a sighting.
Outside the bridge his fellow students use loudspeakers to call bearings in – whether once, on request when two landmarks pass in transit (in line with each other) or (most often) in a regular stream.
Beside the navigator, in a large and comfortable chair, sits the captain – or his right-hand man, the ship's executive officer, with whom he alternates during FNO runs and debriefs.
The navigator's job is to keep the captain updated on what he's doing; RN captains are often not qualified navigators themselves.
Salloway explained: "If you're the nav of a ship, that's what it's like for real.
If your CO [commanding officer] is busy… all while you're driving a possibly inexperienced team, going into a port you're not familiar with where there could be certain risks or threats.
Being able to be in the position we're in now, a safe training environment… It's really helpful for the future."
As well as the "simple" navigation challenge, the course puts its students through a serious test of nerve in the Solent.
On a calm and sunny Friday this stretch of sea, captured between the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton, plays host to scores of small sailing boats and powered vessels.
Keeping to the planned navigation track in the Solent becomes an exercise in instinctively knowing the nautical Rules of the Road, keeping radio calls to, from and between other traffic in mind – and knowing how to navigate back on track after cutting a corner or extending a leg to safely avoid another vessel.
The students made it look effortless even as your correspondent tried and failed to follow the basic navigation plot by gazing at the WECDIS screen.
"Why am I doing this, or why would I do this in future?" mused Lt Dom Jacobs, 24, one of the FNO students.
"If you're running along an enemy coastline, blacked out, running along so you can get the main weapon into arcs so you can shoot [along] that river or feature… it gives us confidence.
It's all good things to help build capacity for when it all goes wrong – or we're at war.
Because that's what we're here for."
It might seem from an outside glance that naval navigation would depend on technology but, putting aside the speed and spare mental capacity that WECDIS gives the navigator, it's really a very low-tech endeavour.
"You should see the specialist navigator course," remarked one of the FNO instructors during a night-time run.
"They use sextants."
Perhaps if there's a next time...
The Register thanks the Royal Navy, in particular: Commander Philip Harper, CO of HMS Severn; the warm and welcoming ship's company of HMS Severn; and the ever-patient students and directing staff of the Fleet Navigating Officer's Course.
Bootnotes
RN Navigation Training Unit
Driving (all of the officers we spoke to aboard Severn referred to it as driving and not sailing or steaming) a warship, as we reported during the course itself, is a highly skilled art that depends on precisely planning what you want the ship to do – and then having a clear enough mind to modify that plan on the fly depending on what the outside world is doing.
HMS Severn's pelorus, mounted centrally on the bridge
Second Officer Will Salloway, 26, a Royal Fleet Auxiliary* student on the FNO course, told The Register: "There's a lot of planning to do in a short timeframe.
That can be quite tough, coming out with a safe plan which has everything you need in it while being able to manage the pressures… you spend three hours on bridge managing the runs, on top of that and planning you've gotta eat and sleep."
"It's probably 20 times as much planning to execution."
Bobbin' on the oggin'
The essence of the FNO course is safely taking the ship to and from an anchorage, or navigating through tricky inshore waters, while maintaining appropriate safety margins.
For a surface ship this means staying away from a not-quite-imaginary line of critical importance: the Limiting Danger Line, or LDL.
The LDL is a depth that must never be passed in case the ship runs aground.
It's calculated by adding the ship's keel depth plus the squat for her planned speed** plus a margin on top, and then drawing "do not cross" lines on the chart.
Each FNO student plans and carries out six live navigation runs in control of the Severn: three "development" passages with FNO instructors coaching them throughout and giving them feedback, and three exam runs where assessors specially embarked for the course quietly watch the students going through their paces and decide if they pass or fail.
The ship herself travelled along Britain's south coast, dipped in and out of Plymouth and then dropped south to the Channel Islands' large tides and tidal stream variations before returning to her home base at Portsmouth.
The view down HMS Severn's pelorus-mounted gyrocompass
The course concentrates on navigating a ship without GPS.
Taking away the external you-are-here service leaves the navigator aboard Severn with three manually sighted gyro-compasses*** and the heart of naval navigation, the Warship Electronic Chart Display and Information System (WECDIS, pronounced by all as "weck-diss").
Naval pilotage means planning a precise track from a position out at sea to an anchorage – or from an anchorage back out to sea, following a marked channel or passing through an area with a strong tidal stream and lots of other maritime traffic.
The navigator then keeps the ship to within yards of her planned track and turning points along the track.
On top of that, the navigator also plans wheel-over points; the spot where the wheel must be turned to a set angle so the ship precisely meets the next planned leg.
In this regard, naval pilotage planning is an exacting science.
Tidal stream predictions off St Peter Port, Guernsey
Contact with the real world's weather and tides introduces an element of "fun" as one instructor whimsically observed.
For the student navigator, fixing your position means putting two of your fellow students on the external gyro-compasses to call out bearings, a third on the surface radar and a fourth on the WECDIS console, mounted in Severn behind the central gyro-compass on the ship's pelorus.
That team then works the maths and the technology together, all in perfect harmony with the navigator's prepared passage plan.
HMS Severn's bridge radar plot.
One of the FNO students keeps an eye on nearby ships and the coast, seen as the big yellow line
One of the FNO students keeps an eye on nearby ships and the coast, seen as the big yellow line
Taking bearings off shore landmarks or nautical navigation marks (lighthouses and prominent buildings by day, flashing lights by night) with a gyro-compass hasn't changed much since compasses were introduced to seafaring: you look down the compass towards the mark, read off the bearing and record it.
Severn's concession to modernity is that her gyro-compasses have a modest internal telescope and illumination for night readings.
A navigation buoy marking the channel into Plymouth harbour
Yet in modern naval navigation, that ancient art of eyeballing the bearings is married to a modern computer system that constantly integrates and updates bearings to produce a live plot of where the ship ought to be.
A WECDIS screen aboard HMS Severn.
It's a curious blend of an old art with up-to-date technology that complements both: for eyes used to instantly seeing the answers to life, the universe and everything presented on a computer, the digital displays telling the bridge crew where the ship is located are curiously reassuring.
Reading bearings to navigation marks would be equally familiar to sailors from the mid-19th century.
During the course safety comes first: the captain and instructors can see a GPS-enabled WECDIS display showing precisely where the ship is, and can intervene if something unsafe is about to happen.
We've got windows – glass ones, not the operating system
Although the FNO course is usually loaded with eight students, during the week that El Reg joined the Severn we had just four: two from the surface fleet; one from submarines; and one from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA).
Severn's captain, Commander Philip Harper, mused that each student's professional naval experience brought something different to their navigational technique.
For example, submarine navigation normally takes place underwater, so submariner students on the FNO course tend to start off by gazing at the screens on the bridge instead of looking outside.
Portland speed/distance/time analogue calculator, used on the FNO course
Lieutenant Jack Crallan, a 32-year-old submariner who was a physics teacher before joining the Navy, agreed: "Biggest difference for me is being able to see things! I'm usually looking at my notebook and listening to the numbers and not looking out of the window.
But on a submarine the only information you have is bearings."
Although the process of pilotage (navigation close to shore) is inherently mathematical, the FNO students insisted you didn't need to be a numerical genius to keep the ship safe ("I got a U in A-level maths," joked one).
Royal Fleet Auxiliary navigator's notebook and quick-reference table
Lieutenant Matt Cavill, 29, who has a degree in molecular cell biology, said of the above quick-reference tables: "When someone works out a distance off track or a distance to run, that's all done off a single bearing in their notebook most likely.
When someone works out a time to regain, or a distance to regain, then they are using mental maths but it's fairly basic – some people can do speed/distance/time [on the fly], it comes relatively easily to me.
I do have a note of easy numbers, though!"
Fellow student Lt Crallan added: "There are a lot of maths tricks as well.
We tend to do something of 12 or 15 or 30 very easily; that's the sine rule.
You can do trigonometry in your head if you pick the right numbers."
Staying in clear water
On the FNO course it's not enough to leave the maths to WECDIS.
From watching the navigation runs, it was clear that whoever was navigating was expected to use the electronic plot to help them form their own mental picture of where the ship was at any given moment, not as a crutch for leaning on.
To the non-nautical observer, RN pilotage is a bewildering verbal stream of bearings, marks, yards, chains, timings, and jargon.
The WECDIS operator is constantly updating bearings on his console behind the navigator, who occasionally darts from the pelorus to a bridge window or shouts "heads" so everyone in front of him ducks while he's taking a sighting.
Outside the bridge his fellow students use loudspeakers to call bearings in – whether once, on request when two landmarks pass in transit (in line with each other) or (most often) in a regular stream.
HMS Severn's captain, Cdr Philip Harper, observes a nearby ship.
Note the "cone of shame" over the ship's master GPS-enabled WECDIS plot so the student navigator (standing behind Cdr Harper) can't cheat
Note the "cone of shame" over the ship's master GPS-enabled WECDIS plot so the student navigator (standing behind Cdr Harper) can't cheat
Beside the navigator, in a large and comfortable chair, sits the captain – or his right-hand man, the ship's executive officer, with whom he alternates during FNO runs and debriefs.
The navigator's job is to keep the captain updated on what he's doing; RN captains are often not qualified navigators themselves.
Salloway explained: "If you're the nav of a ship, that's what it's like for real.
If your CO [commanding officer] is busy… all while you're driving a possibly inexperienced team, going into a port you're not familiar with where there could be certain risks or threats.
Being able to be in the position we're in now, a safe training environment… It's really helpful for the future."
As well as the "simple" navigation challenge, the course puts its students through a serious test of nerve in the Solent.
On a calm and sunny Friday this stretch of sea, captured between the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton, plays host to scores of small sailing boats and powered vessels.
An RAF-liveried motor launch passes HMS Severn on the Solent in September 2021
Keeping to the planned navigation track in the Solent becomes an exercise in instinctively knowing the nautical Rules of the Road, keeping radio calls to, from and between other traffic in mind – and knowing how to navigate back on track after cutting a corner or extending a leg to safely avoid another vessel.
The students made it look effortless even as your correspondent tried and failed to follow the basic navigation plot by gazing at the WECDIS screen.
"Why am I doing this, or why would I do this in future?" mused Lt Dom Jacobs, 24, one of the FNO students.
"If you're running along an enemy coastline, blacked out, running along so you can get the main weapon into arcs so you can shoot [along] that river or feature… it gives us confidence.
It's all good things to help build capacity for when it all goes wrong – or we're at war.
Because that's what we're here for."
It's not all work and no joy aboard the Severn.
Here is the location on the Isle of Wight where Britain's Black Arrow rocket testing programme was based
Here is the location on the Isle of Wight where Britain's Black Arrow rocket testing programme was based
It might seem from an outside glance that naval navigation would depend on technology but, putting aside the speed and spare mental capacity that WECDIS gives the navigator, it's really a very low-tech endeavour.
"You should see the specialist navigator course," remarked one of the FNO instructors during a night-time run.
"They use sextants."
Perhaps if there's a next time...
The Register thanks the Royal Navy, in particular: Commander Philip Harper, CO of HMS Severn; the warm and welcoming ship's company of HMS Severn; and the ever-patient students and directing staff of the Fleet Navigating Officer's Course.
Bootnotes
*The Royal Fleet Auxiliary is the nominally civilian arm of Britain's Naval Service, the military arm being the RN itself.
The RFA runs the Ministry of Defence's fleet of tankers and naval supply vessels that feed, rearm and refuel the Navy at sea.
**When a boat or ship propels herself through water, her stern sinks lower than the rest of the hull depending how fast she's going.
This can be precisely calculated and the Royal Navy has tables for all of its ships giving the squat at known speeds.
***Severn has a sextant hanging on her bridge.
Your correspondent managed to clonk his head on it, mercifully while everyone else was looking the other way.
The RFA runs the Ministry of Defence's fleet of tankers and naval supply vessels that feed, rearm and refuel the Navy at sea.
**When a boat or ship propels herself through water, her stern sinks lower than the rest of the hull depending how fast she's going.
This can be precisely calculated and the Royal Navy has tables for all of its ships giving the squat at known speeds.
***Severn has a sextant hanging on her bridge.
Your correspondent managed to clonk his head on it, mercifully while everyone else was looking the other way.
Links :
- Maritime Executive : UK Integrates Armed, Autonomous Boat Into a Warship's Operations
Thursday, October 21, 2021
Alaska to Greenland via the Northwest Passage
From NOAA by Lt. Patrick Debroisse
In August and September 2021, the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy transited through the Northwest Passage, from Alaska to Greenland. This voyage provided members of the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center (CCOM/JHC) the opportunity to collect data, helping to fill gaps in current hydrographic coverage in the passage and in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Data in the Arctic where sea ice impedes ships is sparse. This is concerning as the Arctic nations, especially the United States, Canada, and Greenland evaluate both extended continental shelf claims and the potential for shipping routes through the Northwest Passage.
U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy’s track from Seward, Alaska to Nuuk, Greenland.
(Credit: Paul Johnson, CCOM/JHC)
A unique data collection platform
Healy is a unique asset to the scientists aboard in its capacity as a heavy icebreaker designed to conduct a wide range of research activities.
Healy is equipped for collecting echo sounder data; conductivity, temperature, and depth data; and is set up for scientists to bring their own equipment.
This leg was a science accommodation cruise, meaning any data had to be collected while underway as no stops were planned. Scientists aboard installed equipment to collect water and air samples as well as to test surface and deep sea water chemistry.
The mapping team’s goal is to transit over areas in U.S., Canadian, and Greenland waters where modern bathymetric data is sparse or non-existent.
The mapping team’s goal is to transit over areas in U.S., Canadian, and Greenland waters where modern bathymetric data is sparse or non-existent.
Dr. Larry Mayer, from CCOM/JHC, determined priority areas with the help of the Canadian Hydrographic Service and the Danish Geodata Agency (Geodatastyrelsen).
Data was continuously collected from the time the ship left Seward, Alaska on August 25 until it arrived in Nuuk, Greenland on September 13.
Larry Mayer (CCOM/JHC) and Paul Johnson (CCOM/JHC) discuss the survey plan with USCG Capt. Ken Boda. (Credit: John Farrell, U.S. Arctic Research Commission)
The data will be used to add to the world’s knowledge of the ocean floor via the General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans and will be provided to the respective charting agencies – NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey, the Canadian Hydrographic Service, and the Danish Geodata Agency – for use in the safety of navigation and navigational products.
Seabed 2030 is an international initiative to map the world’s oceans by the year 2030.
For areas where the ship is traversing through U.S. waters, the data collected will contribute to Seascape Alaska, a regional mapping campaign supporting the 2020 National Strategy for Mapping, Exploring, and Characterizing the United States Exclusive Economic Zone. This National initiative also contributes to Seabed 2030.
Additional projects
Additional projects
Several additional National Science Foundation funded projects were carried out while Healy transited the Northwest Passage.
Two scientists from the University of Alaska at Anchorage conducted experiments to understand the exchange of water between the oceans, land, and air by tracking isotopes in water and air samples. Another group of scientists from Oregon State University are seeking to understand the primary production of phytoplankton in the changing Arctic by evaluating dissolved gases and suspended carbon to track algal blooms and attempt to determine their causes and frequency.
Additionally, two scientists from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency were aboard to collect gravity calibration data along the passage, linking the data previously obtained in the eastern and western Arctic.
Search and rescue exercise, and helicopter operations training
Search and rescue exercise, and helicopter operations training
In addition to the science mission of the trip, the Coast Guard took the opportunity to train in several complex evolutions.
Early in the leg, Healy conducted helicopter operations in conjunction with an MH-65 short range recovery helicopter flying out of Cordova, Alaska.
The ship’s personnel practiced receiving and launching the helicopter as well as refueling operations.
An MH-65 takes off from U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy during training operations.
(Credit: Lt. Patrick Debroisse, NOAA)
Later in the trip, the ship conducted a search and rescue exercise with the Canadian Coast Guard in the area of Resolute, Nunavut, Canada.
The exercise included flight operations for a visit by the Commandant of the Coast Guard, Adm. Karl Shultz, and a moc-search for a reported missing zodiak boat and crew.
Canadian Coast Guard Ship Amundsen passes along side USCGC Healy during joint training near Resolute, Nunavut, Canada. (Credit: Lt. Patrick Debroisse, NOAA)
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Under the spell of the ice and cold on an Arctic expedition
From National Geographic by Esther Horvath
During weeks on a research vessel drifting with an ice floe in the polar night, a photographer discovers profound beauty—and her own limitations.
Polar bear guard Trude Hohle checks for a safe path across the sea ice during a 2019 scientific expedition in the Arctic Ocean.
The icebreaker Polarstern floated on the transpolar drift stream, frozen in sea ice, for nearly a year.
On board were about a hundred scientists and crew members who were braving the polar winter to study climate change in the Arctic.
I was there too, photographing the first leg of the MOSAiC expedition—the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate.
It was the longest and largest Arctic expedition in history and, for me, a gift from the universe.
Polar bear guard Trude Hohle checks for a safe path across the sea ice during a 2019 scientific expedition in the Arctic Ocean.
The icebreaker Polarstern floated on the transpolar drift stream, frozen in sea ice, for nearly a year.
On board were about a hundred scientists and crew members who were braving the polar winter to study climate change in the Arctic.
I was there too, photographing the first leg of the MOSAiC expedition—the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate.
It was the longest and largest Arctic expedition in history and, for me, a gift from the universe.
NGM maps
Four years earlier I’d fallen under the spell of the ice and cold on my first Arctic assignment.
When I returned home, I vowed to devote my photography to the fragile polar environment that had mesmerized me.
Shortly afterward I heard about MOSAiC and knew I had to go.
By the time the Polarstern set sail from Tromsø, Norway, on September 20, 2019, I’d been on nine other polar expeditions.
MOSAiC was different.
For one thing, the first few legs took place during the long polar night.
For another, help was very far away.
The ship, intentionally trapped in an ice floe, drifted close to the North Pole during winter, when the ice was thickest.
If anything had gone wrong, it would have taken two or three weeks for help to arrive and then two or three more weeks to return to human habitation.
We had to be prepared to handle everything ourselves—from fire to falling into frigid water to heart attacks.
(Toothaches were dealt with preemptively: I was told to have my wisdom teeth removed before the trip.)
When I returned home, I vowed to devote my photography to the fragile polar environment that had mesmerized me.
Shortly afterward I heard about MOSAiC and knew I had to go.
By the time the Polarstern set sail from Tromsø, Norway, on September 20, 2019, I’d been on nine other polar expeditions.
MOSAiC was different.
For one thing, the first few legs took place during the long polar night.
For another, help was very far away.
The ship, intentionally trapped in an ice floe, drifted close to the North Pole during winter, when the ice was thickest.
If anything had gone wrong, it would have taken two or three weeks for help to arrive and then two or three more weeks to return to human habitation.
We had to be prepared to handle everything ourselves—from fire to falling into frigid water to heart attacks.
(Toothaches were dealt with preemptively: I was told to have my wisdom teeth removed before the trip.)
For winter legs of the MOSAiC expedition, mandatory training prepared members for emergencies including falling into the frigid Arctic water.
A participant is hauled out of a pool after swimming through the crashing waves and howling winds of a simulated storm.
A participant is hauled out of a pool after swimming through the crashing waves and howling winds of a simulated storm.
Training began long before the expedition.
Subjected to worst-case scenarios, we were taught how to get through them.
During a simulated storm in a training pool, we jumped into rough water and swam through crashing waves to a life raft.
We couldn’t see except for occasional flashes of lightning; the deafening wind and thunder prevented us from communicating with each other.
During polar bear safety training, we practiced shooting a rifle and a flare gun in complete darkness while people screamed around us.
Some days I was so tired I cried.
I did every training twice—once as a participant and once as a photographer.
The hardest was the firefighting.
We learned how to put out fires and rescue people—all while wearing 66 pounds of gear in a controlled-burn training room where temperatures neared 250°F.
For each exercise, participants spent about 10 minutes in the room.
When I was photographing them, I stayed there for hours, holding my heavy camera with sweat dripping down my body.
After it was over, I collapsed against a wall.
Yet I enjoyed it.
It felt important to learn how to take care of myself and my colleagues in extreme conditions—and to learn what my limits were.
I even volunteered for sea survival training, during which 14 of us were left for a few days on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago.
We had to figure out how to distribute our limited supplies (only five sleeping bags), get water, and protect ourselves from the area’s 3,000 polar bears.
By the end, I was exhausted but strangely comfortable with the upcoming expedition.
I knew I was prepared.
We arrived at the ice floe that was to be our home on October 4, one of the last days the sun rose above the horizon.
Very soon the days passed in darkness.
The moon and the stars were often covered by clouds.
The only light came from the Polarstern’s spotlight and the headlamps worn by the participants.
Photographing was difficult.
Wind and blowing snow made it hard to see through the camera’s viewfinder, especially when I was wearing goggles.
My hands became painfully cold.
Many times I saw a beautiful moment but couldn’t capture it because my hands weren’t working.
Eventually I covered my camera, including the trigger, with a very thin foam tape that allowed me to operate it while wearing mittens.
Every day I had to remind myself that I wasn’t on land.
Only two to three feet of unsteady ice lay between me and the ocean below.
Under the lights from the ship, the ice appeared gray; the sky was pure black.
It made me think of the famous NASA pictures taken from the moon in which you can see the lunar surface and then the universe in the background.
From the ice I could see the universe.
Those were the days I enjoyed most.
But the darkness also held terrors, which for me meant polar bears.
On my second—and last—day as a polar bear guard on the ice, I stood alone with my rifle outside a tent where two scientists were working.
There was too much wind, too much snow, and too much darkness to see anything, even an eight-foot-tall polar bear.
But I remembered that a trip wire had been installed around the science station.
If a polar bear ambled through, a signal would flare.
As I was having that thought, an orange signal shot into the air.
My next thought: The polar bear is scared, and it’s running straight toward me.
I tried to take out my signal pistol to scare the bear away—our goal was to protect the bears as well as ourselves—but my hands were so frozen I couldn’t do it.
One of the scientists grabbed it for me.
By the time we made it back to the ship, I was shaking.
Later the crew determined that the wind had tripped the wire.
Even so, I decided that from then on I would shoot only with my camera.
On December 13 we saw a ship on the horizon: the icebreaker Kapitan Dranitsyn, coming to drop off the next team and pick us up.
The return to Tromsø took 16 days, often through thick ice.
About a week after my return I was in Washington, D.C., for National Geographic’s Storytellers Summit.
As I walked through the city streets one morning, I had a sudden realization: I couldn’t fall through the ice into the ocean here.
I didn’t have to scan the horizon for polar bears.
I was safe.
In that moment I understood how vigilant I’d become and how much fear I had felt.
And yet, I missed the darkness so much.
This story appears in the October 2021 issue of National Geographic magazine.
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
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