The Northwest Passage has made headlines since it thawed last year for the first time. For centuries the quest for expedited route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans rivalled today's space race, with European superpowers vying for the prize. Hundreds of sailors and countless expeditions ventured into Canada's Arctic waters, including such naval luminaries as Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook and the ill-fated Henry Hudson,and lost his life—on the Canadian bay that marks its entrance.
Now, with the Arctic's sea ice shrinking at a rate of 10 percent per decade, this coveted shipping lane has opened for business—but shippers are not rushing to use it. The reason: as fate would have it, global warming appears increasing the amount of potentially deadly multiyear ice chunks lurking in the newly opened pathway.
In fact, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago acts as a "drain trap" for ship-wrecking multiyear ice, Howell says. This year, when the first-year ice in the passage had melted, it opened the way for multiyear ice from the Queen Elizabeth Islands to flow into and clog the Northwest Passage. "It's very dangerous," adds Ivana Kubat, an engineer at the National Research Council's Canadian Hydraulics Centre. "If a lower type of vessel hits a piece of multiyear ice, then the vessel can sink depending on the speed and damage." One study showed that multiyear ice was to blame for 74 percent of the damage suffered by ships travelling in the Canadian Arctic between 1976 and 2007.
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