A thin fog engulfs the Amundsen and her ice floe this morning. For my first day on the ice, I’ve joined an enthusiastic ice coring party to hunt for ice algae. The team’s equipment—ice augers, core barrels, saws and large number of thermoses—is hauled out on the ice in a kometic, a large wooden sled dragged behind a snowmobile.

Ice algae are tiny polar plants that live on the underbelly of the ice. They feed on the nutrients that circulate in the ocean, but are kick-started into action when the first rays of light penetrate the ice in the polar spring. They use photosynthesis to convert carbon dioxide and solar energy into food, turning themselves into tasty morsels to be consumed by other Arctic marine organisms. They are among the Arctic’s primary producers—the organisms that lie at the base of the food chain and on which all lie on earth is dependent.

To get to them, the scientists must drill through the ice with the auger and core barrel. The ice beneath my feet is about 1.4 metres thick. The corers (Chantal Lacoste, Benoît Philippe, Christian Nozais, Amélie Sallon, Simon Pineault and Huixiang Xie) move quickly, casting the first metre of ice aside. When the core barrel breaks through the bottom, it sends up a splash of salty slush. The core is carefully removed from the barrel to avoid contaminating the light mat of reddish-brown algae growing on its end. They saw off the bottom 10-centimetres is sawed and store it in a thermos. It will be melted, filtered and analyzed in the lab onboard the Amundsen.

The next day, I pay a visit to the biology laboratory on the ship’s forward deck. The 10-centimetre long sections have been melted at room temperature and the number and type of ice algae are being analyzed. Amélie Sallon, a graduate student at UQAR, is filtering the samples and measuring the amount of chlorophyll A in each. The pigment can be used to determine the ice algae biomass.

Another graduate student, Benoît Philippe lifts three small glass vials of water to the light. Small mossy brown fragments float in each, but some are denser than the others. The difference is due—in part—to the amount of sunlight each was exposed to under the ice. The thickness of the snow influences the algal abundance. Snow has a strong albedo—it reflects the sun’s rays away from the earth. A thinner snow layer lets more light through, giving the ice algae more energy to bulk up.

Over the length of the cruise—and back in the labs at home—the team will determine the type of organisms that make up the sample, whether smaller or larger cells predominate. The sum of the information will give them clues about the characteristics of this spring’s ice algae growth and they’ll be able to compare it with the data taken from other research expeditions. In the end it will give them clues about the way the ice algae might react to altered conditions, including climate change.