from https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/seattle-based-coast-guard-cutters-journey-through-the-arctic-no-ice-liberty-in-changing-waters/

(for the map and pictures, go to the cite)

Seattle-based Coast Guard cutter’s journey through the Arctic: No ‘ice liberty’ in changing waters
Oct. 20, 2021 at 6:00 am
The Coast Guard Cutter Healy in the iceberg-laden waters of Baffin Bay
near Umanak Fjord, Greenland, on Sept. 24. Healy was designed to support
a wide range of Arctic research activities with more than 4,200 square
feet of scientific laboratory space, numerous electronic sensor systems, oceanographic winches, and accommodations for a science team. (Chief
Petty Officer Matt Masasch / U.S. Coast Guard)

Hal Bernton By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter

They call it “ice liberty,” a tradition during the Coast Guard’s
maritime missions in Arctic waters. At a thick ice floe, the crew gets
to disembark for a brief moment of freedom from the vessel confines.
Some play touch football, or bring hockey gear for the occasion. Others
just take a stroll.

This year, there was no suitable ice to be found during the Coast Guard
Cutter Healy’s northern journey off Alaska and Canada. So the event was canceled.

“A lot of the floes had melt ponds with holes in them like Swiss
cheese,” said Capt. Kenneth Boda, commander of the Seattle-based
icebreaker. “We couldn’t get the right floe.”

Boda spoke via telephone during a port call in Boston. The vessel is
deep into a marathon voyage that began July 10 as the 420-foot ship
pulled away from its berth at the Coast Guard base in downtown Seattle
and traveled into Arctic waters off Alaska. After a jog south, the Healy
headed north again and through the Northwest Passage to the Atlantic.

This has been, in part, a training mission for the 85 crew members, a
task that has added importance as the Coast Guard prepares to increase
the U.S. Arctic presence with three new icebreakers that later in this
decade are planned to be homeported in Seattle.

Some of the crew are as young as 18 and began this cruise fresh out of
boot camp.

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“The best way to train is just to get there and do it,” Boda said. “To see where they started and where they are today is just amazing.”

The vessel also hosted a rotating cast of scientists who conducted
research in different parts of an Arctic maritime environment undergoing
epic change as temperatures warm.

The Healy had made frequent forays to the Alaska Arctic, but this was
the first time since 2005 the vessel has traversed the Northwest
Passage, which consists of several different routes that — as sea ice
has declined in recent decades — have become more accessible.

On Prince of Wales Strait, a narrow stretch of water separating two
islands in Canada’s Northwest Territories, Boda said stretches of
shoreline had collapsed due to permafrost thaw. Boda said the crew was
largely able to find open water rather than having to break ice.

“We were surprised at the condition of the ice,” Boda said. “All the heavy stuff, we were able to maneuver around.”

Scientists aboard the vessel included Larry Mayer, director of the
Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping at the University of New Hampshire,
who has spent many years mapping the Arctic sea bottom.

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Icebergs loom ahead of Coast Guard Cutter Healy as the crew navigates
near Umanak Fjord, Greenland, on Sept. 24. Healy’s crew deploys to the
Arctic annually to conduct icebreaking operations, protect U.S.
interests in the high latitudes, and support oceanographic research
missions with members from the international science community. (Chief
Petty Officer Matt Masasch / U.S. Coast Guard)
Coast Guard Cutter Healy operates in the iceberg-laden waters of Baffin
Bay near Umanak Fjord, Greenland, on Sept. 24, 2021. At 420-feet long,
Healy is the Coast Guard’s largest cutter in the fleet and the United States’ newest and most technologically advanced icebreaker. (Chief
Petty Officer Matt Masasch / U.S. Coast Guard)

1 of 2 | Icebergs loom ahead of Coast Guard Cutter Healy as the crew navigates near Umanak Fjord, Greenland, on Sept. 24. Healy’s crew
deploys to the Arctic... (Chief Petty Officer Matt Masasch / U.S. Coast
Guard) More
He said the mapping this year in the Northwest Passage included a lot of shallow areas where the bottom had been scoured by icebergs over many
decades. Further east, there were deeper canyons carved by glaciers that
had since retreated.

Mayer said there was considerably more ice this year than in some years
past, but that it was largely young ice, not the multiyear, thick floes
that used to be a frequent sight during the summer cruises.

In another Arctic research cruise that ventured some 500 miles north of Alaska’s northern shoreline, scientists also reported considerably more
ice than in recent years. It was thicker and extended farther south.

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This was not much by historical standards, but surprising in comparison
to the recent steady decay of the ice pack,” said Bernard Coakley, a University of Alaska Fairbanks geophysical scientist who was aboard the
vessel Sikuliaq during a six-week Arctic trip that ended Sept. 30 in Nome.

Measuring the melt
This was Mayer’s 10th cruise aboard the Healy, so he has a lot of
experience on what can go right and wrong on the vessel. He said that
morale was high this year, and galley food — which some years has been a disappointment — ranked as the best ever.

“It was really a treat. Nowadays, a science party often has vegans, and
they always had a vegan option,” he said.

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Mayer and other scientists who had boarded in Seward, Alaska, got off
the Healy when the ship reached Nuuk, a city of some 17,000 on the
southwest coast of glacier-clad Greenland.

Coast Guard Cutter Healy crewmembers prepare a conductivity, temperature
and depth instrument for deployment off the coast of Alaska during
Healy’s Arctic deployment on Aug. 26. (Chief Petty Officer Matt Masasch
/ U.S. Coast Guard photo)
Coast Guard Cutter Healy’s commanding officer, Capt. Ken Boda, right,
speaks Sept. 6 to Canadian coast guard Commissioner Mario Pelletier,
left, and Assistant Commissioner for the Arctic Neil O’Rourke on Healy’s bridge during a visit near Resolute, Nunavut, Canada, while Healy’s crew traversed the Northwest Passage. During the visit, Healy’s crew
conducted a joint Arctic search-and-rescue exercise with members of the Canadian coast guard and Canadian Rangers. (Petty Officer First Class
Michae / U.S. Coast Guard)

1 of 2 | Coast Guard Cutter Healy crewmembers prepare a conductivity, temperature and depth instrument for deployment off the coast of Alaska
during Healy’s... (Chief Petty Officer Matt Masasch / U.S. Coast Guard
photo) More
New arrivals included Robert Pickart, a scientist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who has been studying how warm water can get channeled through undersea troughs to accelerate melting in tide-water glaciers. He also studies what happens to Greenland glacier melt as it
enters the sea.

The fate of Greenland’s glaciers is a center-stage concern for climate scientists since their rate of melt will help determine how fast sea
levels rise. And great quantities of glacial freshwater melt could cause
a big slowdown or even collapse of an ocean current system — the
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation — that helps shape the
earth’s climate.

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Pickart said he worked closely with the Healy’s crew to position the
ship in key locations in Baffin Bay, where in some areas the coastal
waters were filled with hundreds of icebergs.

“It’s really critical that we understand this (glacial melt) spread in
high latitudes,” Pickart said. “This is a big deal.”

A print of a photo of the Revenue Cutter Bear in the ice off Point
Barrow, Alaska, in August 1898. (F.D. Fujiwara / U.S. Coast Guard)
A print of a photo of the Revenue Cutter Bear in the ice off Point
Barrow, Alaska, in August 1898. (F.D. Fujiwara / U.S. Coast Guard)
Arctic shipwreck found
During the voyage, the Healy crew traversed some of the waters cruised
more than a century ago by their vessel’s namesake, “Hell Roaring” Mike Healy, captain of the wooden-hulled U.S. Revenue Cutter Bear from 1886
to 1895.


Healy, who was born into slavery, is a legendary figure in U.S. maritime history. He was the first person of African American descent to command
a U.S. government ship, and embarked on annual patrols off Alaska, which covered 15,000 to 20,000 miles.

Healy was a kind of maritime sheriff who helped enforce the law as he
acted as “judge, doctor and policeman to Alaska Natives, merchant
seamen, and whaling crews,” according to a U.S. Coast Guard history, and
also led the Bear on a historic 1884 rescue of starving survivors of an
Arctic expedition under command of Army 1st Lt. Adolphus Greely.

A photograph of Captain Mike Healy taken on the quarterdeck of his most
famous command, the Revenue Cutter Bear, with his pet parrot. (U.S.
Coast Guard)
A photograph of Captain Mike Healy taken on the quarterdeck of his most
famous command, the Revenue Cutter Bear, with his pet parrot. (U.S.
Coast Guard)
After Healy, who battled alcoholism, left the Bear, that vessel spent
many more years on Arctic patrols, and later did duty in World War I and
World War II. After decommissioning, the Bear sank at sea in 1963 while
being towed from Nova Scotia to Philadelphia, where it was going to be
turned into a dockside museum and restaurant.

The Bear’s final resting place was a focus of decades of searches. In
August, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Ocean Exploration,
working with the Coast Guard, located and photographed a wreck that with “reasonable certainty” was the Bear, according to a statement released
last week by NOAA.

Boda has a copy of a Healy biography. And on Sept. 22, Healy’s birthday,
he used the ship’s loudspeaker to read a passage in commemoration of the ship’s namesake.

By then, Boda had learned about the discovery of the Bear’s sea-bottom
wreck, which was identified with the help of photos taken by a
remote-operated underwater vehicle that detailed special features, such
as a specific pattern of steel staples on the bow.

At left, a 2021 image of the port bow of the “unidentified wreck”
showing similar sheathing patterns to the historic image of U.S. Revenue
Cutter Bear while in dry dock in 1925. (Left image courtesy of
NOAA/MITech; right image courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard)
At left, a 2021 image of the port bow of the “unidentified wreck”
showing similar sheathing patterns to the historic image of U.S. Revenue
Cutter Bear while in dry dock in 1925. (Left image courtesy of
NOAA/MITech; right image courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard)
By the time the Healy pulled into port in Boston last week, Coast Guard
and NOAA officials had arranged for a formal announcement of the Bear’s discovery by the docks, with the Healy serving as the backdrop.

After leaving Boston, the Healy returned to sea, headed for Baltimore en
route to a Panama Canal passage and a final jog north up the West Coast
to Seattle. The goal is to make it back by Nov. 20, shortly before Thanksgiving.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com; on Twitter:
@hbernton.

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