Researchers head for Northwest Passage

More than 40 scientists will spend the next two months conducting climate change research from Baffin Bayto the Beaufort Sea aboard the Canadian icebreaker Amundsen.

As part of an ongoing Arctic research program started in 2003, the researchershave just finished mapping the seabed and taking samples near Pond Inlet, along thenorth coast ofBaffin Island.

Now the ship is headed north to the Kane Basin in Baffin Bay, near the 79th parallel.

The researchers are looking at everything from the atmosphere to life on the seabed, to contaminants and viruses, ArcticNet executive directorDr. Martin Fortier said in an interview.

They will also collect data from instruments that remain placed underwater all year around.

"We have four of those observatories or moorings in northern Baffin Bay, we have four in the western Arctic in the Amundsen Gulf-Beaufort Sea area, and we also have four of them in Hudson Bay,"Fortier said.

"These are our three observatories, where we are able to collect a lot of information on ocean proprieties and change even when we're not present."

The Amundsen is scheduled to visitResolute Bay and Kugluktuk before sailing west through the Northwest Passage to the Beaufort Sea.

It willreturn to Iqaluit at the end of October.