With my trip coming to an end, the science work carries on...

My last full day on board has been a busy one. Ralf Staebler's sled finally is out on the ice churning in data on CO2 and the atmosphere and also geve Leif a chance to set up refractors for his air analysis system. The deployment of the sled was in some way epical with 25 knots wind and a -30 temperature giving a perception of -50°C. It took about an hour of hard work in the wind, on the pack two kilometers west of the Amundsen to Ralf, Leif, Phil and Roc, to get it to work properly. Not to say about Ralf's laptop untimely system crash because of the cold. Things didn't look too good when even sticking it into Ralf's parka, ti regain some heat didn't seem to help at all. Scientific creativity once more came to the rescue and the running engine of one of the ski-doos did the trick. I don' t think the mention sitting laptops on running engines in isntruction manuals, but the untested protocol worked fine. No beers to celebrate tonight, as the bar is closed, but an iridescent sunset greeted us as we returned to the ship.

A few more hours and the Twin Otter will land on the runway traced west of the Amundsen to fly Wayne and Bart, the two reporters from the Winnipeg Free Press, Helmut, the researcher working on CO2 chemistry, and myself back to Inuvik. 15 high-school students and teachers will instead fly in as well as Emily Chung, another of the winners of the Wfsj Amundsen Competition (www.wfsj.org <http://www.wfsj.org> ) that brought  me here. Time has flown by as it's been 14 days packed with discoveries, learning and wonder in front of the vastness of the Arctic ecosystem. Hope to come back and see much more of this region... Geenland with its icebergs, the canals of the North Western passage and also the massive russian icebreakers. I guess it got me... I've got the Arctic bug...

The green laser light is flashing as Jeff Seabrook, PhD student at Purdue University (www.purdue.edu), operates the the now functioning Lidar, a special kind of laser using three different light frequenciesas a radar would use radio waves. We both wear thick dark goggles because the beams, although invisible, could harm our eyes. The installation process is not yet complett through but is coming along nicely and tomorrow the instrument shoudl be churning out the first data on the ozone present in the 10.000 meters of atmosphere above sea level. The aim of this experiment, launched by Environment Canada - Oasis (www.ec.gc.ca/environment_e.html), is to observe and record ozone depletion events, sudden and still misterious falls in the concentration of this chemical. "It's an important piece of science to understand how our atmosphere works and very significant for the next climate models as ozone chemistry in the atmopshere is connected to that of Mercury and volatile organic compounds as those found in fossil fuel exhaust" explains Phil Tackett from Purdue University (www.purdue.edu) working on ozone as well and sharing with Seabrook the tiny lab on the very top of the Amundsen.

Today was a recoivery day for many of the instruments on board as the rosette is finally repaired and running and Marie Emmanuelle who restlessly operates it has regained her smile...

Tomorrow is the last day on board for several people as Wayne and Bart, the two reporters from the Winnipeg Fre Press as well as for myself but also a busy day. Ralf Staebler's sled will finally be deployed on the ice and should stay there several days on its own to collect CO2 data as the ship moves on to other locations. 

Myself I'm on the lookout for seals and bears. Still hoping to catch some more as my last 24 hours in the Arctic approach. It's a good spot, some crew members tell me as we are close to Banks Island and lots of open water should attract seals and make it an appealing hunting ground for bears. In the meantime, the last highlight of the day was a chilly but wonderful walk on the ice at night. The 25 knots wind and the -30° make your skin feel as if you were at 50 below. But the view, with streams of snow whistilng on the pack, was just unbelieavable.

Last night we had luck with northern lights, the first ones I've ever
seen and I'm now on the look out for more good shots. Possibly some
bears... please...

The scenario is magnificent and you might almost mistake this for a
salt lake where to race a sportscar if it wasn’t for the cracks and
openings revealing the open water below. Gary, our chief scientist,
is grinning. In front of us lies just the peculier mix of thin ice
and open water he was longing for. Scientists today will have a
chance to observe closely how CO2 is released from the ice and the
water into the atmosphere, as well as ozone and maybe mercury
depletion events. No big breaktrough, but an important bit of arctic
science could come to happen here today.

It will take many more essays, ice-cores (been trying my own hand at
it and can assure you it's a tough job!), filtrations and surveys but
it’s in days like these that a scientist might finally find
confirmation for the ideas hes’s been working on.

This is no easy and smooth task I think, as I hear many struggling to
get their instruments to work properly. We’re on a 250 million dollar
ship powered by 6 - 16 cilinder diesel engines and state of the art
equipment connecting us to the outside world so seamlessly that only
50 years ago reasearchers could just dream of these resources, but
research in the Arctic still takes a lot of creativity. The rosette
for instance, a paramaount facility for almost all onboard, providing
several labs with multiple daily samples of water reaching as far as
the bottom of the ocean, has broken a component that requires a 24
hour break in sampling and must be almost entirely refabricated in
the metal shop on board in record time.

But persistence pays. Jeff Seabrook, the PhD from York University who
got on board with me on the 21st and left red-eyed less than 24 hours
later with a dead laser for ozone alalysis, is now back on board
installing happily his machine. It took him a gruelling ten day
journey to Bozeman, Montana, where the manufacturer of the instrument
is, and back but he’s finally here. With a big smile and a flashy new
laser beam he promises to show me tomorrow.

The flight is definetly worth the trip though. I finally get a bird's eyevie of the flaw leads everybody is talking about. An intricated network of canals in the ice that appear and disappear according to the winds. In the barren white and icy lanscape, they look like warm rivers as the water, barely above -2°C lets out clouds of vapour into the 30 below air.

That's where we're heading tomorrow, I think looking below as getting close up with these patches of open water is what pushed the Amundsen and its scientists to embark in its unique mission that envolves wintering at sea. That brings to my mind a comment Gary nonchalantly made a few days ago "This propably makes us the only ship in the Arctic Ocean at this time of year, except for the nuclear russian icebreakers"... as I lower a careful eye on the Gps... better not forget where home lies when you're out here...

Flying at these latitudes is just a completly different business as I'm explained by Mike McNulty who, toghether with Claude Marchand is piloting the Bell 212. Fog, vapour and ice cristal reduce visibility enourmously and all navigation is instrumental and only very experienced pilots are allowed to fly here and always in pairs, one for the instruments and one for the steering. At 100 knots, a few minutes in the wrong direction would cost us precious liters of fuel. And without fuel you might end up having to land on the ice somewhere and wait for hours - that's if you're lucky - for the Amundsen (the only ship at sea!) to come and rescue you. At -30 in the blowing wind that doesn't sound fun... But the flight goes by smooth as silver and as we carefully land in front of our hangar a cracking from the radio tells us the kitchen has keept a coupple of dishes warm for us. So I'm back with a camera full of shots and no bags. At least I hope Brent, who did get his, will pay some beers since tonight the bar on board is open. Last but not least, we carry  a present from Sachs. Two large and heavy boxes of muskox meat, a Inuvialuti treat that I've been longing to try since my arrival here.

By the way, Fredric, the french CO2 scientist, did some icebraking of his own and ended up in the Ocean up to his hips while trying to get some ice cores on newly formed ice. "Mais pas de panique" ... he was wearing his survival suit and is fine. The balance of the day on the ice is one chilled scientist and one ice-core sampler on the bottom of the Arctic. Could have been worse, even if somebody points out that we have about 40 scientists on board and only two samplers. One in fact. But scientists are harder to replace, and luckily they float....

Today we woke up to a new patch of ice at 70° 58' N and 123° 55' W, just South of Banks Island, where we should remain for 3-4 days if the north-easterly winds of the coming days don't blow too strongly pushing us South towards the mainland. Schedules are getting busier and the we have three teams out on the ice for sampling of ice-cores, catching some zooplancton and sensing. My eagerness of another bear sighting as the one yesterday has suddenly vanished. Gary Stern, our chief scientist and all the crew have warned us to be extra-careful in wanderingalone or too close to ice ridges that could hide a specimen of the largest land carnivore... a hungry polar bear.

Guido Romeo

Full time reporter since 1997, Guido Romeo contributes regularly to "Il Sole 24Ore", the main Italian business daily, "Vogue Italy" and the popular science magazine "Focus". On behalf of the European Commission he coordinated the Geod project (Genetics in Europe Open Days - www.geod.org) as an initiative of the 2000 European Science Week. Graduated from the University of Bologna, he holds a degree in journalism from the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme in Lille, France and a masters in communications. In 2004 he has been Armenise-Harvard science-writer fellow at the Harvard School of Medicine and winner of the Astra Zeneca award for science communication. In 2007 he has been assigned the Piero Piazzano science and environment reporting award and the Ordine dei Giornalisti (italian national journalist guild) Fellowship for reporting on African affairs.