After 24 days traveling along the 6,215 miles (10,000 kilometers) from Alaska to Greenland, the Finnish icebreaker MSV Nordica arrived at Nuuk, Greenland on July 29. The vessel departed Vancouver, Canada and traversed the Northwest Passage setting a new record as it is the first to have sailed through this once-forbidding route earlier than ever before. Due to climate change, the Arctic sea ice has been melting sooner every year, opening the route earlier and for a longer time each summer.
The Northwest Passage is a sea route connecting the northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via waterways through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. According to media, records kept by Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans show that the previous earliest passage of the season happened in 2008, when the Canadian Coast Guard ship Louis L. St-Laurent left St. John’s in Newfoundland on July 5 and arrived in the Beaufort Sea off Point Barrow, Alaska, on July 30.
The Nordica, with a team of researchers and Associated Press journalists on board, completed a longer transit in less time — albeit in the opposite direction — setting off from Vancouver on July 5 and reaching Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, on July 29.
While the icebreaker encountered Chinese cargo vessels, Alaskan fishing boats and a German cruise ship in the Pacific, upon entering the Canadian archipelago, the Nordica travelled alone. Radar indicated the presence of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Sherman near Alaska’s Point Barrow; along the coast an occasional collection of houses revealed evidence of human settlement in the far north.
One of the explorers is photographer David Goldman who returned with photos of the expedition, which will can be viewed here
