Going to the Arctic’s flow

November 3, 2009

For a couple of years, a Cole Harbour teenager has been sending message-filled bottles to the Arctic to help researchers track ocean currents. On Wednesday, she will head north for the first time to drop a few bottles herself into the sea.

"I’d like to see where they go," said Bonita LeBlanc, 16, who is considering a career in oceanography. "This is the chance of a lifetime."

The Grade 11 student at Ecole du Carrefour in Dartmouth will be in the Arctic aboard the coast guard research vessel Amundsen for about two weeks. She will be taking part in the program with other students from across Canada but was the only teenager chosen for the Arctic excursion through Youth Science Canada. Although Bonita will be helping scientists work on other experiments while in the Far North, she is also going to use the time to work on her own research, which she started while in Grade 8.

She said it was an article in Canadian Geographic about scientist Eddy Carmack that piqued her interest a few years ago. He studies currents using drift bottles. "I contacted him and he was just thrilled and surprised that someone as young as myself — I was 13 at the time — found interest in this," said the teenager, who has since met her inspiration.

Over the last two years, Bonita has sent 580 bottles with messages out with the crew of the coast guard ship Louis S. St-Laurent to be dropped at various predetermined locations in the North. Of those, six have been recovered, which she considers a great result because only about one in every 25 is found.

"I’ve been very lucky," she said. "Every single bottle that’s been found is from the first drop that I did." Two bottles were found in Ireland, one in Iceland, one in England and two in Baffin Island. She said the two found in Baffin Island were particularly intriguing because they had been sent off from opposite sides of an island but ended up washing ashore about 91 metres from each other and were found just a day apart. Information gathered from the drift bottles is collected by researchers at the Institute of Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C.

The teenager is quick to point out that she uses clear biodegradable bottles donated by Sleeman Breweries. Even the messages or, in one instance, drawings from Grade 6 students at Ecole Bois-Joli in Dartmouth, were done in pencil to avoid harming the environment.

Bonita said the trip, which starts in Iqaluit, Nunavut, will help her decide if oceanography is a career she wants to pursue.

"I can’t wait to be on the ship. I’m living my dream."

By: Pat Lee, Staff Reporter
Photo: Eric Wynne
Halifax Chronicle-Herald