Seattle Icebreaker Heads for North Pole [View all]

[Divernan]

Source: KUOW Seattle

The Shell Oil rig that left Elliott Bay last week isn't the only big vessel heading to the Arctic from Seattle. A Coast Guard icebreaker heads to Alaska on Wednesday. The Seattle-based ship will help a multinational team of scientists explore pollution at the North Pole.

Climate change has fueled competition at the top of the world, where shipping and resource extraction are becoming feasible for the first time. With a tiny fleet of icebreakers (the Coast Guard has just two in operation), the U.S. lags behind other nations. At last count, Russia has 41 icebreakers.

KUOW's John Ryan reports.
"It's a beehive of activity on the docks at the Coast Guard station in South Seattle. Crew members and scientists are loading crate after crate on board the Healy. It's a 420-foot long ice breaker.

"This is historic, the fact that all these nations are working together. It's historic just from that point of view. They will be getting a pan-arctic picture of the chemistry of the Arctic Ocean. This will generate data that will be used for decades to come."

Read more: http://kuow.org/post/seattle-icebreaker-heads-north-pole

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In a rare example of cooperation between Democrats and Republicans, Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell and Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski have introduced legislation to add as many six ice breakers to the U.S. Coast Guard fleet, which currently only has 2, as compared to Russia's more than 40 icebreakers.
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Climate change has been shrinking the northern ice cap about 10 percent each decade. Polar shipping and mining are becoming feasible where they never were before. Nations have been jockeying for territory and resources at the top of the planet.

Cantwell: "The Chinese, the Russians are already aggressive in their resource development in the Arctic. I found out this morning even India is building an icebreaker."

The Coast Guard estimates new ice breakers could cost nearly a billion dollars each. Cantwell says it'll be worth it as shrinking ice makes the Arctic grow in economic importance, if not ecological health, in the years ahead.