Hello readers,
Well it has been a long time since I have written a blog post, let's see if I can remember how.
Today I wanted to show you a video of sea ice from a camera that I deployed with my supervisor (Christian) in May 2011.
I briefly alluded to it in a post in May 2011. Christian and I used a helicopter to deploy a camera at Cape Josef Henry (see map below).
View Cape Josef Henry in a larger map
Cape Josef Henry is a few hundred meters high and is quite steep, giving an excellent view of the sea ice. We set the camera up to take a picture every hour for the entire year.
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| Me with the Time Lapse Camera. Photo Courtesy of Christian Haas |
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| Me with the Time Lapse Camera Package. Photo Courtesy of Christian Haas |
It only took a few hours to get it set up, but if course, the first picture the camera took was of my hand:
and for the next year I had constant nightmares that that first picture of my hand was the only one the system took. I started to hope that if it did not work, at least the camera should fall off the cliff so that I would never find out. This was the last glimbse I had of the camera:
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| Can you see the camera? It directly up from the 2 in 2011, you'll see a small bit of orange. |
In May 2012, one of the goals of the campaign was to revisit the camera and get the pictures from it, but this year we did not have a helicopter. Alec and I first tried to skidoo there, but the ice was incredibly rough and we were nearly out of fuel by lunch time and only a third of the way there, even with the guidance of Jim Milne, a long time Arctic logistics operator, and two Inuit Canadian Rangers.
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| Alec and I with Jim Milne (far right) and our Inuit Guides. |
We then did some work with our plane and then had a few bad weather days. On the very last day of the campaign, when we should have been packing up and getting ready to load the airplane to go to Resolute, Alec and I loaded two skidoos into the Twin Otter plane and had the pilot land as close to the camera site as he could. There was cloud cover rolling in and out and a big storm looked like it would arrive sometime that day or tomorrow so our pilot was keen to spend as little time as possible out there. We landed about 5km away, next to an stream and pushed the skidoos out.
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| About to start out. Photo courtesy of J. Alec Casey |
Alec and I loaded up a couple batteries for the camera and our gear and started skidooing up the backside of the Cape. It was quite steep. I have done a lot of skidooing on the sea ice now, but not much on steep terrain, nor has Alec so we only pushed as far as we felt comfortable and then walked, trying to tow the batteries and gear with us. Of course, towing a 40kg battery over the ice (or in your backpack while wading through thigh deep snow gets tiring fast and we soon abandoned the battery and walked to the camera to get the images. At this point too we had been told we had a couple hours max buy our pilot and we were running out of the time quickly.
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| Me at the camera site. Photo courtesy of J. Alec Casey |
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| Me about to visit the camera. Photo courtesy of J. Alec Casey |
We opened the camera up and it was still running. I swapped the memory cards, downloaded the 8700+ pictures and started the system up again. Once Alec and I landed we began packing up gear as the pilot had then decided he wanted to leave ASAP.
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| The Camera, with a view looking towards Alerts (not visible). Photo courtesy of J. Alec Casey |
Since then, I made a quick video from the pictures but haven't been very happy with it. I have finally spent a bit more time with the pictures, correcting the white balance, correcting the pictures for Lens distortions and trying to remove flicker caused by clouds.
Of course while doing this, I came across something amazing. In 2011, Jon Turk and Erik Boomer became the first people to circumnavigate Ellesmere Island, and they did it by kayak. It took them 100+ days to kayak/ski some 1500 miles. They were towing their kayaks over the ice when necessary and then paddling them when they could. Because of their extraordinary feat, they were in the top 10 of National Geographics Explorers of the Year for 2012.
Well it turns out that by sheer luck/chance Jon and Erik set up a camp for 10hrs or so directly infront of our camera. If this had not been right on July 1st/June 30, I probably would not have noticed for a long time yet, but while making the movies and editing the photos I noticed something strange sitting on the ice. I wasn't sure what it was, didn't look like a polar bear but something else. I sent it around to Alec and Christian and Alec wrote back "Is that a tent and two kayaks?" This was the Eureka moment, suddenly I remembered Jon and Erik's trip and decided to get in contact with them.
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| Erik Boomer and Jon Turk's tent and Kayaks!! Photo from the camera. Courtesy of the CASIMBO and Christian Haas. |
Sure, enough, they camped nearby a few days before, and the tent and kayaks match their description. What is really great is that the kayaks give us a scale to our images, a scale we can use to retrieve more information from the images such as the size of the ridges and the melt ponds on the ice.
To see the videos I have made, go to my youtube channel at
http://www.youtube.com/SIBeckers
Well that is all. Check out the videos, hope you enjoy the pictures as well.
