Temp: 31 F Weather: Partly sunny and snowy, 12 knot winds

Today we are in the Yukon Territory, offshore of Herschel Island. To keep myself busy, I started off the morning with a Tai Chi class taught by an oceanographer from Virginia (he is originally from China), and later in the gym I practiced the boxing moves one of the Coast Guard crew taught me. The night was a mix of card games and dice games, and laughing too hard at things that probably aren't as funny as they seem, but confinement and camaraderie will do that. Since we're closer to land, wildlife sightings are increasing again. It was a good day in the birding world.

(Photo by the Master Chief Navigator of the Healy)

Follow the Healy's route on this map.

Snowy Owls sometimes make a living hunting or scavenging out on the sea ice. Along with Ivory Gulls and Arctic foxes, they are known to follow polar bears, scavenging from their kills. So that's probably why we saw a Snowy Owl 50 miles offshore for the second day in a row. It was an older male (these owls get whiter with age). Maybe he was headed for the sea ice, almost 200 miles north. Or maybe he was giving up on finding the ice edge and going back to land. Either way, he was tired of flying. The owl circled the ship for an hour, exciting all of the photographers on board. He landed on the flight deck briefly, then landed on a pole at the bow of the ship, and perched there for about another hour. I also saw three eider species today: Spectacled, King, and Common.

Even though you are reading this from some place far away from the Arctic Ocean (up here even Anchorage is far), I know you and I are asking ourselves the same question. When are we going to break some ice on this trip?

Unfortunately, my sources tell me it's not going to happen. Up here, climate change is not the subject of debate. It is reality, and it is affecting the Arctic disproportionately. Climate models show temperatures rising here much faster than other places on Earth. We've been using satellites to observe polar ice for about 40 years, and this year the ice cap shrank to its smallest size yet.

The Arctic ice reaches its maximum retreat in September each year. By October, it's already on the upswing. The polar ice pack begins expanding south, and ice that is fastened to the land, or "landfast" ice, begins to appear too. When the Arctic Ocean is ice-free, the area has a maritime climate like we are experiencing now. Once the ice covers the ocean, the maritime influence subsides, and an interior continental climate sets in. That is when the really cold temperatures come along.

Eventually the floating, migrating pack ice meets up with the grounded, immobile landfast ice, and where the two meet is called a stamukhi zone. The two may collide together to form pressure ridges, or may pull apart, forming long, thin, open-water leads. The pack ice moves all winter long, carried slowly by currents and pushed around by winds. A female polar bear can dig a den on the ice in fall and wake up in spring somewhere far away from where she was.

Ice in the summer is receding a lot, but ice in the winter still covers the same range. Bering Sea ice is born in the Arctic and pushed south by wind. The wind pushes ice around capes and islands, and in the lee of these physical features, on the back side, the water often remains open. These recurring open areas are called polynyas. The world's population of Spectacled Eiders lives in a polynyas south of St. Lawrence Island all winter. In part, the body warmth of 350,000 birds helps keep the water open, even when the winds are not in their favor.

Tomorrow we'll be back in Alaska, heading to Camden Bay, just offshore of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. There are about 130 people on this ship, so if we see any sea ice, you'll be the 131st to know.

Melanie Smith, Landscape Ecologist, Audubon Alaska