Icy Finger of Death

Amazing video, I never got a chance to dive under ice, my friends did and they all talk about the abundance of life they found. I don't feel that bad for the starfish, they are voraciousness predators in their own right and I have seen areas of intertidal rocks stripped of every living organism by a explosion of Starfish.

Top Gear - The North Pole Expedition

Two middle aged men, deeply unfit, mostly drunk. Show off an inconvenient truth.

Courtesy of SDA

Sticker shock

The next time you think food prices are high in your area, just think of the poor souls up North. Shipping costs are going up, which means so does food prices. There are some subsidies that help reduce the price, but that is changing. More here at CBC. Pictures courtesy of markcoatsworth's photostream



Semi-related the price of chilies go up in Indonesia, no doubt the blame will fall on Harper and his Neo-Cons for that as well.

Polar Bears 3, BBC spy cams 0

Never underestimate what a bear can do. Below is a video of what polar has to do to get dinner and with the cameras not being the main course this time.
(kudeos to CenturionX of CGN for link and title)

Operation NANOOK

August 3, 2010
Her Majesty’s Canadian Ship (HMCS) Montreal and HMCS Goose Bay (background) shortly after departing from St. John’s Newfoundland transiting towards the Arctic to participate in Operation NANOOK.
Operation NANOOK is one of three major recurring sovereignty operations conducted annually by the Canadian Forces (CF) in Canada's Arctic. Planned and directed by Joint Task Force North (JTFN) the whole-of-government operation highlights interoperability, command and control, and cooperation with interdepartmental and intergovernmental partners in the North. Operation NANOOK 10 takes place in Canada's Eastern and High Arctic area from August 6 to 26 and includes two major exercises, Exercise NATSIQ, a sovereignty and presence patrolling exercise of military resources, and Exercise TALLURUTIIT a whole-of -government exercise that focuses on environmental containment and remediation resulting from a simulated fuel spill. For the full caption…

Discovering the wreck of HMS Investigator

A stunning side scan image of the wreck

MERCY BAY, N.W.T. • The ship whose crew discovered Canada’s Northwest Passage has been found 155 years after it was abandoned and disappeared in this isolated Arctic bay, a historic find and one that may help bolster Canadian claims to Arctic sovereignty.

The wreck of HMS Investigator was detected in shallow water within days of Parks Canada archeologists launching an ambitious search for the 422-ton ship from a chilly tent encampment on the Beaufort Sea shoreline.

“It’s sitting upright in silt; the three masts have been removed, probably by ice,” said Ifan Thomas, Parks Canada’s superintendent of the western Arctic Field Unit. “It’s a largely intact ship in very cold water, so deterioration didn’t happen very quickly.”
Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com

Update

Some more images and a link to Parks Canada website on this find.


ROV used to take images of the wreck

Minister Jim Prentice contemplating a Sailors grave