Join voy­a­ges to Jan May­en and Spits­ber­gen from the sofa! Rolf Stan­ge will publish impres­si­ons and adven­tures from his polar tra­vels more or less regu­lar­ly through the arc­tic sum­mer. Litt­le sto­ries and expe­ri­en­ces, first-hand from the far north. More here in the blog.

MS Lan­gøy­sund is a day trip boat ope­ra­ting every sum­mer from Lon­gye­ar­by­en in the Isfjord area. Every day from June to Sep­tem­ber, it is sai­ling to Barents­burg or Pyra­mi­den, pas­sing high­lights of natu­re inclu­ding gla­ciers and bird cliffs.

The ongo­ing sea­son is, so far, not going too well for Lan­gøy­sund and the owner com­pa­ny. A few weeks ago, the ship ran aground in Bore­buk­ta. The hull was dama­ged and the pas­sen­gers had to con­ti­nue their jour­ney back to Lon­gye­ar­by­en on ano­ther ship. At least it did not take too long befo­re Lan­gøy­sund was repared and cle­ared for sai­ling again.

Now, the owner com­pa­ny, Hen­ningsen Trans­port og Gui­ding (HTG) in Lon­gye­ar­by­en, is facing accu­sa­ti­ons of pay­ing ille­gal low wages to the crew. Alre­a­dy in April, the respon­si­ble uni­on (Norsk Sjø­manns­for­bund) had to take action to make sure the crew, which is lar­ge­ly of Phil­ip­pi­ne natio­na­li­ty, is get­ting Nor­we­gi­an con­tract, as requi­red by Nor­we­gi­an law for any ship sai­ling under Nor­we­gi­an flag.

During a con­trol in Lon­gye­ar­by­en it tur­ned out that the crew has got Nor­we­gi­an con­tracts, but is not get­ting the wages accor­ding to it. Accor­ding to con­tract and Nor­we­gi­an law, the mini­mum wage for crew on ships under Nor­we­gi­an flag is 5,000 US-$ plus over­ti­me pay, which can be expec­ted to be signi­fi­cant. But accor­ding to Norsk Sjø­manns­for­bund, the crew see hard­ly 1,500 US-$. Coope­ra­ti­on with the Phil­ip­pi­nes is dif­fi­cult for the uni­on, as they fear to be black-lis­ted by their con­trac­ting agen­cy even if their wages are, in theo­ry, gua­ran­teed by law.

Accor­ding to the owner, HTG, the con­tract part­ner of the crew mem­bers is an agen­cy in Mani­la, which is recei­ving pay­ment from HTG to dis­tri­bu­te it to the indi­vi­du­al crew mem­bers. HTG sta­tes that con­tract and pay­ment are cor­rect and does not con­sider to pro­vi­de docu­men­ta­ti­on of pay­ment to Norsk Sjø­manns­for­bund as requi­red. The uni­on has set a dead­line which ran out today (Thurs­day) at 9 a.m. As Norsk Sjø­manns­for­bund has not recei­ved any pay­ment docu­men­ta­ti­on, they have now announ­ced to arrest the ship.

HTG is facing simi­lar accu­sa­ti­ons on MS Bil­lefjord, ano­ther day trip boat, new in the busi­ness in Spits­ber­gen. In this case, HTG is not the owner, but lar­ge­ly respon­si­ble for the manage­ment.

Source: Norsk Sjø­manns­for­bund

Parts of Aus­t­fon­na, the lar­ge ice cap on Nord­aus­t­land, have recent­ly advan­ced rapidly or “sur­ged”, as sci­en­tists call this beha­viour, which is cau­sed by gla­cier dyna­mics rather than cli­ma­te chan­ge. See Aus­t­fon­na: an ice cap on the move, Spitsbergen-Svalbard.com news ear­lier in June.

The Nor­we­gi­an Polar Insti­tu­te has published a time lap­se video com­po­sed of about 1000 sin­gle satel­li­te images that visua­li­zes the sur­ge of Aus­t­fon­na impres­si­ve­ly. Parts of the gla­cier front advan­ced more than 4 kilo­me­t­res. The sur­ge cul­mi­na­ted in 2012.

More about sur­ging gla­ciers in gene­ral and Aus­t­fon­na in Rocks and Ice.

The sur­ge of an ice cap of the size of Aus­t­fon­na has con­se­quen­ces. It is curr­ent­ly by the lar­gest con­tri­bu­tor to glo­bal sea level rise in the who­le Spits­ber­gen archi­pe­la­go, with a con­tri­bu­ti­on out­weig­hing all other gla­ciers in Sval­bard tog­e­ther. Local­ly, it may cau­se hazards to navi­ga­ti­on: the den­si­ty of ice­bergs is increased, and the pushing gla­cier front may have chan­ged sea bot­tom topo­gra­phy.

Source: Nor­we­gi­sches Polar­in­sti­tut

Fred­heim, Spitsbergen’s most famous trap­per hut, is now acces­si­ble online in shape of a vir­tu­al tour. The woo­den hut, with a luxu­rious two flo­ors, was built and used by the legen­da­ry Nor­we­gi­an hun­ter Hil­mar Nøis. It is beau­tiful­ly situa­ted in Tem­pel­fjord, but dif­fi­cult to reach out­side the snow mobi­le sea­son, and if you mana­ge to get the­re, then you will face clo­sed doors.

Now it is pos­si­ble to visit every room in Vil­la Fred­heim (inclu­ding the two adja­cent huts) any time from any­whe­re wit­hout any effort: In late March, I have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pan­ora­ma-pho­to­graph Fred­heim in detail, and I have put the results tog­e­ther to crea­te a vir­tu­al tour, which is now online, making it pos­si­ble to visit Fred­heim insi­de, every room. The tour runs auto­ma­ti­cal­ly like a film; alter­na­tively, it is pos­si­ble to sel­ect indi­vi­du­al rooms (pan­ora­mas). Short expl­ana­to­ry texts give some back­ground infor­ma­ti­on and sto­ries from the wild years of the trap­pers in Spits­ber­gen.

The local news­pa­per Sval­bard­pos­ten has alre­a­dy tur­ned their rea­ders’ atten­ti­on to this pos­si­bi­li­ty to visit Fred­heim online. More than 1000 vir­tu­al visi­tors have been the­re within a few days, more than visi­ted Fred­heim phy­si­cal­ly at the “open day” that is held the­re twice during the win­ter sea­son: the only pos­si­bi­li­ty for the public so far to get some insi­de impres­si­ons from Fred­heim.

Enjoy – this is the way to Fred­heim 🙂

Pla­s­tic pol­lu­ti­on in the oce­ans is one of the tru­ly threa­tening pro­blems for the envi­ron­ment on a glo­bal sca­le, inclu­ding the Arc­tic. You can see ama­zing amounts of pla­s­tics on many of Spitsbergen’s bea­ches, a lot from fishe­ries, but also ever­y­day use pla­s­tic items inclu­ding tooth­brushes, ligh­ters, bot­t­les and so on and so forth. The list is end­less. For an impres­si­on, have a look at the famous pho­tos taken by pho­to­grapher Chris Jor­dan on the remo­te Mid­way Islands in the Paci­fic: Alba­tross chicks who died with a sto­mach fil­led of pla­s­tic gar­ba­ge, becau­se it loo­ked like food to their par­ents.

On almost every trip in Spits­ber­gen, we coll­ect seve­ral cubic met­res of pla­s­tic gar­ba­ge from remo­te bea­ches, which has led to visi­ble impro­ve­ments in many places over the years (and by the way, nobo­dy has the capa­ci­ty to coll­ect com­pa­ra­ble amounts of pla­s­tics in such remo­te are­as as tou­rist ships!). This is good, but obvious­ly not the solu­ti­on to a glo­bal pro­blem.

Some impres­si­ons of pla­s­tic pol­lu­ti­on on Spitsbergen’s bea­ches, from Bear Island in the south to Nord­aus­t­land in the far nor­the­ast, and of our efforts to clean some of the­se bea­ches.

Click on thumb­nail to open an enlar­ged ver­si­on of the spe­ci­fic pho­to.

Every day, pla­s­tic pol­lu­ti­on is kil­ling lar­ge num­bers of fish, sea­birds, mammals (from seals to dol­phins and wha­les) and turt­les in the world’s oce­ans. And pro­ba­b­ly even worse, once waves and UV radia­ti­on have grind the pla­s­tics down into micro­sco­pic par­tic­les, plank­ton is eating it, thus incor­po­ra­ting pla­s­tic in the food chain, whe­re it is enri­ched on every tro­phic level upwards.

To real­ly do some­thing about pla­s­tic pol­lu­ti­on, it would be neces­sa­ry to:

• use much less pla­s­tic items in our ever­y­day life. This is for ever­y­bo­dy. How often do you throw a pla­s­tic bag away after having used it only once?
• replace pla­s­tics with bio-deg­redable mate­ri­als. Next to con­su­mers, indus­try, sci­ence and poli­tics all need to do their home­work to achie­ve this.
• redu­ce the incre­di­ble amounts of pla­s­tics alre­a­dy pre­sent in the world’s oce­ans today. And this is whe­re it is curr­ent­ly get­ting inte­res­t­ing: after seve­ral years of work, The Oce­an Cle­a­nup has published a fea­si­bi­li­ty report, intro­du­cing a rea­li­stic con­cept to remo­ve pla­s­tic pol­lu­ti­on from the oce­an on a glo­bal­ly rele­vant sca­le. The main idea is to let the curr­ents do the main work: install shal­low bar­riers that catch pla­s­tics and con­cen­tra­te them so they are rela­tively easy to remo­ve from the water. The water and ani­mals keep drif­ting under the bar­ri­er to redu­ce by-catch. Cos­ts are esti­ma­ted at 4.50 Euro per kg pla­s­tic or 33 times less than other methods available, accor­ding to The Oce­an Cle­a­nup. The pro­ject claims that it should be pos­si­ble to redu­ce the amount of pla­s­tics floa­ting in the infa­mous Paci­fic Gar­ba­ge Patch by 50 % over 10 years at cos­ts small com­pared to the dama­ge done by the pla­s­tics both to mari­ne eco­sys­tems and eco­no­mies.

The impres­si­on remains that The Oce­an Pro­ject is likely able to make a signi­fi­cant con­tri­bu­ti­on to the solu­ti­on of an urgent glo­bal pro­blem, at a pri­ce more than reasonable. To lift the pro­ject up to the next level, 2 mil­li­on dol­lars are to be coll­ec­ted via crowd­fun­ding. At the time of wri­ting (18 June), more than half a mil­li­on have alre­a­dy been dona­ted. The pre­sent aut­hor and owner of this web­site has alre­a­dy made his con­tri­bu­ti­on and asks the rea­der kind­ly to con­sider a dona­ti­on. If you have seen the amounts of pla­s­tics on remo­te bea­ches in Spits­ber­gen or else­whe­re or if you have seen Chris Jordan’s abo­ve-men­tio­ned pho­tos, they you are pro­ba­b­ly hap­py to sup­port The Oce­an Cle­a­nup. Click here to get to The Oce­an Cle­a­nup crowd­fun­ding web­site.

And remem­ber a cot­ton bag for your next shop­ping trip … 🙂

Source: The Oce­an Cle­a­nup

It was a dra­stic expe­ri­ence which made pret­ty clear how remo­te and poten­ti­al­ly vul­nerable the com­mu­ni­ties in Spits­ber­gen still are: on Mon­day, almost 2 weeks ago (02 June), the com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on bet­ween Spits­ber­gen and the out­side world bro­ke com­ple­te­ly down for a cou­ple of hours.

Some years ago, fib­re cables bet­ween Spits­ber­gen and Nor­way have repla­ced ear­lier com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on sys­tems. The need to trans­fer lar­ge data volu­mes that come from satel­li­te anten­nas near Lon­gye­ar­by­en (SvalSat, the white balls on Pla­tå­ber­get abo­ve the air­port) to cus­to­mers inclu­ding ESA and NASA has made the cables neces­sa­ry.

The high tech­no­lo­gy super­fast con­nec­tion fai­led com­ple­te­ly on said Mon­day: the who­le traf­fic bet­ween Spits­ber­gen and the rest of the world went down for seve­ral hours becau­se of a pro­blem in a relay sta­ti­on in Ande­nes (Ves­terå­len, north Nor­way), whe­re the fib­re cable rea­ches the main­land. The who­le tech­ni­cal infra­struc­tu­re is dou­ble to com­pen­sa­te for tech­ni­cal pro­blems with parts of the sys­tem, but this time, the who­le thing was dead for a while.

This did not just cut Lon­gye­ar­by­ens inha­bi­tants off from tele­pho­ne and inter­net, but it made it impos­si­ble to reach poli­ce, res­cue ser­vices and other vital ser­vices and infra­struc­tu­re and it lar­ge­ly shut down inter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on within the­se bodies. The hos­pi­tal in Lon­gye­ar­by­en reli­es on com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on with the uni­ver­si­ty hos­pi­tal in Trom­sø and the con­stant avai­la­bi­li­ty of air trans­port of pati­ents to main­land Nor­way in dif­fi­cult cases. Satel­li­te pho­nes were quick­ly put into use, but they requi­re a view to the sky wit­hout any obs­truc­tions, which does not exact­ly app­ly to a medi­cal doctor’s work place. Plus, the­re are many of them in Lon­gye­ar­by­en, and also this line of com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on tur­ned out unable to ser­ve the amount of traf­fic: it was at times sim­ply impos­si­ble to get through. Even in nor­mal times, satel­li­te pho­nes are not exact­ly relia­ble.

The pro­blem was sol­ved after a few hours, but it made the poten­ti­al for dis­as­ter quite clear. Espe­ci­al­ly repre­sen­ta­ti­ves of vital infra­struc­tu­re and public ser­vices such as poli­ce, res­cue ser­vice and hos­pi­tal made it clear that the avai­la­bi­li­ty of com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on is of high importance for public safe­ty and health.

Telen­or, the Nor­we­gi­an pro­vi­der of com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on ser­vices and infra­struc­tu­re, is now working with aut­ho­ri­ties to make sure this does not hap­pen again. But the­re is now tal­king about lea­ving some of the good old land­li­ne pho­nes in place. Lon­gye­ar­by­en, becau­se of its size, tech­ni­cal infra­struc­tu­re and poli­ti­cal cir­cum­s­tances a very modern place, is inten­ded to be one of the first places in Nor­way wit­hout a land­li­ne pho­ne sys­tem, whe­re all com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on is based on a mobi­le grid. The recent inci­dent will be part of this deba­te, that’s for sure.

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten

The ice cap Aus­t­fon­na is cove­ring lar­ge parts of Nord­aus­t­land, the second-lar­gest island in the Spits­ber­gen archi­pe­la­go. The total sur­face area of Aus­t­fon­na, actual­ly a com­po­si­te of seve­ral smal­ler ice caps, is more than 8400 squa­re kilo­me­t­res.

For deca­des, Aus­t­fon­na was con­side­red to be rela­tively sta­ble: it did not suf­fer mas­si­ve loss of volu­me as many other gla­ciers in Spits­ber­gen and else­whe­re in the Arc­tic. More recent­ly, mar­gi­nal parts were thin­ning while cen­tral parts were gai­ning thic­k­ness, a beha­viour known to prepa­re a sur­ge if it lasts for some time. A sur­ge is a sud­den advan­ce whe­re a gla­cier can move for­ward over many kilo­me­t­res within a year or two, it is a result of gla­cier mecha­nics and not of cli­ma­te varia­ti­ons (see Rocks and Ice for more about gla­ciers and sur­ges). Also parts of Aus­t­fon­na are known to have sur­ged in the past, for exam­p­le Brås­vell­breen, the sou­thern part of the ice cap, in the 1930s.

Infor­ma­ti­on from satel­li­te images has now yiel­ded evi­dence for increased velo­ci­ty over lar­ge parts of Aus­t­fon­na. The ice cap is pushing into the Barents Sea, pro­du­cing vast amounts of ice­bergs and thus con­tri­bu­ting signi­fi­cant­ly to glo­bal sea level rise, curr­ent­ly more than all other gla­ciers in Spits­ber­gen tog­e­ther. Nevert­hel­ess, sci­en­tists invol­ved in obser­ving Aus­t­fon­na assu­me it will increase its volu­me in the years to come.

AECO, the arc­tic expe­di­ti­on crui­se orga­niza­ti­on, has issued a war­ning to navi­ga­te careful­ly in the­se waters, as lar­ger num­bers of ice­bergs than usu­al and chan­ges of the gla­cia­ted coast­li­ne have to be expec­ted.

Such an event, whe­re an ice cap of thou­sands of squa­re kilo­me­t­res starts to move more rapidly, is uni­que during the peri­od of detail­ed sci­en­ti­fic obser­va­ti­on and regu­lar tou­ristic access. The recent obser­va­ti­on is based on data from the Euro­pean satel­li­te Sen­ti­nel-1a. One reason the­se data have drawn more than just a litt­le bit of atten­ti­on is the fact that the satel­li­te had, at the time in ques­ti­on, not even ful­ly rea­ched its orbit, but was nevert­hel­ess able to pro­du­ce high qua­li­ty data.

Source: BBC News.