BEAUFORT SEA — Members of the Coast Guard Research and Development Center, under the guidance of the Coast Guard’s recently released Arctic Strategy, worked with partner federal agencies and scientific organizations to successfully complete a simulated spilled oil response and recovery exercise aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Healy on the Arctic ice field Tuesday.
Forty-six years ago, a ship long as the Empire State Building sailed with intention toward obstacles that captains usually avoid. The icebreaking tanker SS Manhattan was an oil company’s attempt to see if it might be profitable to move new Alaska oil to the East Coast by plowing through the ice-clogged Northwest Passage.
Despite taking up as much space as Australia, the blue-white puzzle of ice floating on the Arctic Ocean is an abstraction to the billions who have never seen it. But continued shrinkage of sea ice is changing life for many living things. A few Alaska scientists added their observations to a recent journal article on […]
The melting of sea ice in the Arctic is well on its way toward its annual "minimum," that time when the floating ice cap covers less of the Arctic Ocean than at any other period during the year. While the ice will continue to shrink until around mid-September, it is unlikely that this year’s summer […]