WEBVTT

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- Being able to join the Coast Guard Cutter Maple

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^on their transit through the Western Arctic

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^and the Northwest Passage has provided us

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^a great opportunity to accomplish

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some oceanographic science along the way.

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As a part of the regular environment

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of operating this vessel, there's great attention

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to safety, to training, and the people here

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aboard this boat have a tremendous amount

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of experience with the kind of operations

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similar to oceanographic work at sea.

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Along the way, we have recovered, refurbished,

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and redeployed oceanographic moorings.

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We have deployed zooplankton sampling nets

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to sample the ecosystems we're traveling over.

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There are a couple of species of what are called

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copepods that are particularly important ecologically.

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These zooplankton are much larger than other species

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in the same family in other parts of the world,

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and that's because of how rich and productive

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this ocean is up here, and how short the season is.

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The HARP is a high-frequency acoustic recording package,

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and what it does is it sits at the sea floor on its own

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and records underwater sound continuously for periods

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of up to a year at a time.

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And then we can come back a year later and recover it

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to retrieve the acoustic recordings that it's made

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during that time.

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(whale sounds)

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Like the calls of bowhead whales, big baleen whales

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that make sounds as they navigate through heavy sea ice

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to feed on plankton.

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There's a relatively rapid and large scale change going on

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in the Arctic, and we see that the ice is breaking up

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across the Arctic earlier in the spring,

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it's freezing up later in the fall, it's thinner,

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and so determining how those changes that we see

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translate to changes in the ecosystems,

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and for these animals, is particularly important.