Endorsed by the Ocean Decade and led by the SOI Foundation, the Blue Futures Pathways Expedition aims to unite young people (aged 18-35) from across Canada with Indigenous knowledge-holders, scientists, industry professionals and artists for a hands-on journey exploring various career pathways within the Sustainable Blue Economy.
The 2024 Blue Futures Pathways expedition on board the Mi’kmaq-owned icebreaker Oqwatnukewey Eleke’wi’ji’jit (MV Polar Prince) set sail from Iqaluit, Nunavut on 3 August 2024, and arrived in St. John’s, Newfoundland, on 19 August. It focused on demonstrating how Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Western approaches can collaborate harmoniously to tackle challenges, seize opportunities, and explore Canada’s international role within the Sustainable Blue Economy.
Throughout this journey, 20 young people delved into a variety of ocean and water-related career paths against the backdrop of the communities between Nunavut and Newfoundland, enhancing their learning experience with the unique perspectives and challenges of the people we meet along the way.
The Expedition Diary
Week 1: “Anyone who has spent time at sea in the Arctic or North Atlantic can confidently tell you that even the best-laid plans will change.”
Iqaluit may not immediately conjure images of blue skies, green tundra, and roads lined by dwarf fireweed, but it’s what we were greeted with when we arrived in the capital of Nunavut this past Saturday. This was the starting point for this year’s Blue Futures Pathways expedition.
Our time in Iqaluit really began the next day with a visit to a dog team where we went on qamutiik, a traditional Inuit sled, rides and learned about how close this vital part of Inuit culture came to being extinguished in the 1960s and 70s. We also had a chance to help butcher a seal and feed it to the now-hungry dogs. We later travelled to the site of a former Hudson’s Bay outpost, which is now used by a local company called ArcticUAV. There we had the chance to see cutting-edge ROVs and UAVs up close and hear from Kirt Ejesiak, ActicUAV’s CEO, about how tools like those are helping build capacity for new kinds of work in the North. That evening we met Nate Jewett and Zipporah Ungalaq, members of an Arctic Inspiration Prize-winning team tackling food security in Nunavut. In addition to lighting the qulliq, a traditional Inuit oil lamp, and singing a few traditional songs, we were treated to a feast of contemporarily prepared country food: seal meatballs, polar bear jalapeno poppers, caribou stew, walrus, and a medley of other unique foods harvested from Nunavut’s rich lands and waters.
The energy that had slowly been building over the previous few days came to a boil on Tuesday morning. The MV Polar Prince, our home for the next two weeks, had appeared in the waters of Koojesse Inlet overnight. With everyone finally all together on the ship later that afternoon, we gathered in the hangar to introduce ourselves and reflect on the previous few days. Then, as if the Polar Prince itself wanted to contribute, its engines rattled to life. For some, it was their first time experiencing the deep, unfamiliar rumble. For everyone, it was a sign that the expedition was finally underway.
Life aboard the ship is rarely dull, as a few early risers found out early Wednesday morning. “There are dolphins outside,” exclaimed botanist Paul Sokoloff, who had just run in from the deck to deliver the news to the mess hall, which proceeded to clear out instantly. For the next fifteen minutes, dozens of Atlantic white-sided dolphins surrounded the ship as we all watched on in wonder. Shortly after, we arrived in York Sound, 175 kilometres south of Iqaluit near the mouth of Frobisher Bay. Here, we were divided into teams to learn about introductory seafaring skills, scientific water sampling, and basic drone operations. By the afternoon it was onto storytelling and ROV construction workshops as the Polar Prince cruised further out of Frobisher Bay and into Hudson Strait.
As the sun rose on the second ship day, so too did a strong westerly wind that prevented any shore landings on Killiniq Island. Rather than exploring the only place where Nunavut, Nunavik, and Nunatsiavut border each other, we spent the day venturing inward, learning more about storytelling, remotely operated vehicle construction, plants, and eDNA. Each of these workshops came with challenges, but the ROV assembly was a true dive into the deep end. Strewn across the hangar floor were all the pieces of an ROV, save for instructions. After many hours and even more sighs of frustration later, the youth transformed the parts into working vehicles.
“I’ve never done anything like that before. So for me when it was finished, and everything worked, and the motors turned, and they all turned in the right direction…it was like, whoa, I just did that.” – Rebekka Sanguin, Rankin Inlet, Nunavut.
The wind, which didn’t concede on the third day and again left us ship-bound, became part of a workshop on navigation. The question we had to answer was where would be a good place to drop our anchor that night. Without any communication between groups, we all settled on an area close to Big White Bearskin Island. The position was so ideal that the captain, who had previously selected a different location, changed his mind and dropped anchor less than a mile from our site.
On day four the winds subsided enough for us to enter nearby Nachvak Fiord. Just as our divers entered the fiord’s blue waters, the rest of us went to the mouth of the Nachvak River armed with rods and lures. Hours later, dozens of Arctic char lay in bags, coolers, and on the shoreline, waiting to be shared on the ship and with the communities we’d find ourselves visiting in a few days time. As the Polar Prince made its way past the last of the fiord walls, now silhouetted by shades of pink and purple, a call came out over the staff radios, “Seal on the port side,” a few moments passed, “No. Correction. It’s a polar bear!” A group rushed over just in time to see a bobbing head staring back in bewilderment before disappearing into the dark, rolling wake altogether.
Week 2: “Like the stories we’ve heard, the ocean itself is also telling a story.”
At 65 years old, the Polar Prince has lived a long, hard-working life. Sometime around our expedition’s tenth day, its years and mileage caught up with us in the form of electrical issues, causing our southerly pace to slow to a crawl, but we nevertheless made it to Nain, Labrador. Luckily, while work on the capricious Arctic veteran was carried out, we carried on by collecting and processing more eDNA samples, operating the ROVs we constructed earlier in the trip, piloting drones, deploying a hydrophone, picking up garbage along the beach, and taking a cold swim in a nearby lake.
The winds that had picked up throughout the day made for an entertaining return to our fickle, floating home that evening. The following days’ early morning maneuvers to test out provisional repairs ended as quickly as they started, signalling that we’d be spending another day in Nain. Again, we broke off into groups, with some continuing their drone piloting lessons, others collecting water samples, divers in the water and a team sorting the beach plastics and garbage collected the day before. The real highlight of the day was that night when the aurora borealis put on a fantastic late-night show for those willing to forgo sleep.
The tug of war between the ship’s repairs and our schedule ended the morning of our 12th expedition day when the decision was made to pull up the anchor by noon and proceed, albeit slowly, further down the coast. The decision left enough time for a quick morning hike up nearby Mt. Sophie, though for some, perhaps not quick enough given the swarms of mosquitoes and black flies that feasted on us indiscriminately.
As Nain disappeared into the layers of wildfire smoke that now blanketed the coastline, our energy was high. This was in part because we were once again moving and in part because of the afternoon’s activity: a ship-based take on The Amazing Race. Four teams had two and a half hours to test everything they’d learned on the expedition at 14 different stations, from navigation to salsa dancing.
Our voyage the next day through the grey smoke-filled expanse under a glaring orange sun was punctuated by workshops on Inuit land claims agreements and renewable energy and a late afternoon visit to the Gannet Islands Ecological Reserve, Labrador’s largest seabird breeding colony. Thousands of puffins, guillemots, and other North Atlantic seabirds surrounded our zodiacs. The entire area was enveloped by an intense aroma that, according to one educator, smelled like “an old lobster trap.” After many photos and countless oohs and aahs later, we found ourselves back aboard the Polar Prince cruising further south through the last of the Labradorian waters before our final stretch of the expedition along the Newfoundland coast.
By the time we reached the waters off Quirpon Island, the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, any qualms we had with the Polar Prince’s abilities were gone. Unfortunately, those concerns were replaced by strong westerly winds, the same kind that plagued us earlier in the expedition. Again, we were forced to abandon any landing plans we had for the island. As we continued our southbound voyage for the remainder of the day, we learned more about two-eyed seeing, innovation in the sustainable blue economy, marine ecology and diving.
The following day we found ourselves anchored off of Fogo Island, where we later explored a local fish plant, the famed Fogo Island Inn, and heard about the history of cod fishery there.
The final day of our expedition was spent ashore exploring Bonavista, a town further down the coast. To beat the heat, we headed back to the Polar Prince for a swim and, for those brave enough, a jump or two off the ship and into the comparatively warm Newfoundland waters. The swim was followed by a feast of corned beef, potatoes and vegetables, a traditional Newfoundland meal called a Jigg’s dinner. To make it extra special, we held it at one long table assembled in the hangar, complete with freshly picked local flowers and rays of sunlight illuminating the murals painted by members of past SOI expeditions.
As a curtain of darkness slowly drew across the Newfoundland coastline and the banquet concluded, the hangar was transformed back into the space we entered two weeks earlier, only this time, it would be our last as a group. One by one, we tried our best to find the words to describe the whirlwind we just experienced; it wasn’t easy. The night was capped by presentations that the youth had been chipping away at over the previous few days, including poetry, songs, slide shows, oral storytelling, and even a short, hilarious video about the reality of early mornings aboard the ship. Each performance was somehow tied back to something we had learnt or experienced along the way, from fishing in Nachvak Fiord to the science of water sampling.
“Like the stories we’ve heard, the ocean itself is also telling a story, right… As you go from north to south or to the equator, it’s changing… and it’s cool to be able to demonstrate that even with just some of the barebones CTD data we’ve collected” – Andrew Tucker; Iqaluit, Nunavut
Before filtering out of the hangar for the last time, we had one task left: create our mural. As the Polar Prince plied the last moonlit waters of the trip, we claimed a spot among the other murals on the walls of the hangar to tell the story of our expedition before the twinkling lights of St. John’s appeared on the horizon and our journey drew to a close.
This expedition diary was written by the Blue Future Pathways 2024 expedition participants and was originally published on the SOI website.