UiT will be disembarking in St. John's, Canada
The first part of the student course Arctic Future Pathfinders will be completed in St. John's, Canada. The sailing ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl will continue to Bermuda without students and researchers on board.
On August 9, it was announced that the sailing ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl will not be able to sail through the Northwest Passage, a journey that has been planned for two and a half years. Although ice charts for large parts of the route have looked promising, recent data shows that upcoming ice conditions could exceed what the ship is certified for. This is particularly true in the western part of the Arctic in Canada, where ice melting has been delayed compared to normal, and uncertainty about the conditions in the coming weeks remains high.
The leadership at UiT The Arctic University of Norway has now decided that the students and researchers on board will disembark in St. John's, Canada.
"Arctic Future Pathfinders is a course about the Arctic, where the original goal was to sail through the Northwest Passage and witness the nature, wildlife, and effects of climate change firsthand. The Indigenous perspective is also central to the course. Therefore, completing this first part of the course in St. John's, in collaboration with Memorial University of Newfoundland, is a good solution," says Jørgen Berge, Vice-Rector for Research and Development at UiT The Arctic University of Norway.
The sailing ship will arrive in St. John's on August 20. From there the students will fly home.
"We would have loved to sail through the Northwest Passage, but we never compromise on safety. It is great that UiT has found a good solution to complete the first part of the course in St. John's. The students have shown great adaptability and engagement, and the experience of working and living closely together on board provides valuable learning that I am confident will be useful for them in the future", says Haakon Vatle, expedition leader and director of the Statsraad Lehmkuhl Foundation.
UiT will not be aboard on the next leg
The voyage began in Nuuk, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), on August 5, with plans to sail through the Northwest Passage and arrive in Cambridge Bay on August 29. There, students from the first leg of the journey were to disembark, and a new group of students was to board for the next leg to Whittier, Alaska, with an arrival date of October 4.
The student course is part of the One Ocean Expedition, which spans an entire year, sailing from Bergen to Bergen. Statsraad Lehmkuhl is now heading south to fulfill as many of its commitments on the U.S. West Coast as possible. The current plan for the ship is to arrive in Bermuda at the same time it was originally scheduled to reach Cambridge Bay. From there, the ship will sail through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles and continue to Vancouver, arriving as planned in mid-October.
"We are continuously working on finding a solution for the students who were supposed to board in Cambridge Bay. We have decided that we will not participate in the leg from Bermuda to Vancouver, so the course will be held elsewhere on land, in the Arctic. At this time we don’t know where, but we will figure out the next couple of days," says Berge.