Related media release: Study confirms permanent loss of Canada’s last Arctic epishelf lake

Reaching Milne Fiord takes the better part of a week in a good year.

From Vancouver or Quebec City, researchers take multiple flights — to Ottawa, Iqaluit and then Resolute Bay via Arctic Bay. In Resolute, the team spends several days at the federal Polar Continental Shelf Program base, preparing equipment and weighing every load.

“The Twin Otter can carry only about 1,000 kilos,” said Dr. Jérémie Bonneau. “Everything has to be weighed and balanced before we go.”

The 2022 team (L-R): Jérémie Bonneau, René Gysler (pilot), Erik Wagenaar, Derek Mueller, Cameron Fitzpatrick, Alex Forrest, Joseph Shoapik, Anna Crawford and Dustin Patar. Photo credit: Dustin Patar

From Resolute, the team flies to Eureka to refuel before continuing to Purple Valley near Milne Fiord.

“I’ve been delayed for 12 days because of poor weather,” said Dr. Bonneau. “You need to plan for about a month. The actual work, when conditions allow, may be only five or six days.”

Fieldwork takes place in July, when snowmelt allows aircraft with wheels to land. Researchers can travel about 10 kilometres from camp on foot, while helicopters connect them with instruments across the wider study area. Low cloud and poor visibility, however, can prevent flying about half the time.

Jérémie Bonneau testing water salinity and temperature at the rift that formed in the Milne Ice Shelf after the 2020 collapse. Photo credit: Cameron Fitzpatrick

The research program has brought scientists back to Milne Fiord for nearly two decades, building the long-term record that allowed the team to reconstruct the lake’s disappearance.

The team collects measurements using sensor tubes about the size of a thermos. The instruments record temperature, depth and conductivity, which researchers use to determine the water’s salt content.

The researchers also maintain a long-term mooring: a set of instruments anchored to the seafloor and held upright by buoys, recording conditions throughout the Arctic winter. Each summer, the team hauls the equipment up through the ice, downloads the data, replaces its batteries and redeploys it.

Romane Bouchard and Bernard Laval retrieving a mooring in a Milne Ice Shelf melt pond. Photo credit: Bella Mouchet

Those instruments remained in place during the COVID-cancelled 2020 field season and recorded the lake’s drainage, which no researchers were there to witness.

“We saw the breakup in satellite images, and two years later we got the data,” said Dr. Laval. “The instruments were there, observing. We just couldn’t reach them.”

Back to media release: Study confirms permanent loss of Canada’s last Arctic epishelf lake

Source: https://news.ubc.ca/2026/09/science-at-the-edge-of-the-ice/