Research team heads to Beaufort to study floating 'ice islands'

A team of scientists aboard a Canadian icebreaker will spend part of August and September studying the risk floating 'ice islands' pose to potential oil and gas drilling operations in the Beaufort Sea.

David Barber is a professor and researcher at the University of Manitoba and leads a team from ArcticNet, a network of Canadian Centres of Excellence that brings together scientists, managers, Inuit organizations, northern communities, governments and the private sector to study the impacts of climate change in the Canadian Arctic. Each year, he leads a team that studies sea ice conditions in the Arctic Ocean.

For six weeks, Barber and his four-member team will climb aboard a Canadian icebreaker, the Amundsen, in order to study the movement of ice hazards in the Beaufort.

"(The ice) could be anywhere in size from small pieces, to the size of a car, right up to several large pieces that are several tens or hundreds of kilometres across," said Barber. "When we get a piece of tabular ice in the ocean that is very big, we call them an 'ice island.'"

A team from Imperial Oil will be joining the expedition, even though it suspended plans to drill some of the deepest wells ever in the Canadian Beaufort Sea. Imperial Oil said it wouldn't be able to do an interview about their involvement until later this week.

If the oil company decides to restart its plans to drill in the Beaufort, the company — and its partners — would have to prove to regulators its drilling rigs can withstand or dodge multi-year ice packs that choke and wander around the waters off Tuktoyaktuk, where they plan to drill.

Understanding when and where these masses are floating could mean that rigs could safely drill in the sea without the risk of being collided into by 'ice islands.'

"If you have a drill ship in the Southern Beaufort, and one of these things comes towards you, it's not a matter of breaking it up," said Barber. "It's matter of getting out of its way."

Barber and his team will place GPS tracking devices, sonar systems, and meteorological stations on top of ice formations in the Beaufort. They'll track the data using Iridium satellites until next spring, when the ice melts.

The data that's collected, said Barber, could help to develop "ice forecasts" that could predict hazardous ice conditions for both drilling rigs and ships navigating the Northwest Passage.