Canada, U.S. to team up on Arctic seabed mapping project
Last Updated: Monday, June 30, 2008 | 4:58 PM ET
CBC News
The United States and Canada, which have been known to disagree on certain Arctic sovereignty claims, will collaborate for the first time on a United Nations scientific mapping project aimed at extending their sovereignty in the Arctic.
Canadian officials said Canadian and American icebreakers will head northward later this summer to map the Canada Basin, located north of the Beaufort Sea.
"We're talking the area to the west and north of Banks Island, so we're quite a ways north," said Michael Gardiner, the Canadian Coast Guard's assistant commissioner for the central and Arctic region.
Both countries are trying to prove their continental shelves extend beyond the 200 nautical-mile economic zone, under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
At stake for those countries and other Arctic nations is a vast area of seabed that may be rich in oil and natural gas.
Canada, which ratified the treaty in 2003, is already collaborating with Denmark on mapping the Lomonosov Ridge, located just off the coasts of Ellesmere Island and Greenland.
The U.S. has not yet ratified the treaty, but it is moving ahead with its scientific work anyway.
For its first-ever UN mapping effort with the U.S., Canada will send its coast guard icebreaker Louis St. Laurent with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Healy towards the North Pole to the Canada Basin.
While some scientists have predicted the North Pole area to be ice-free this summer, scientists working on Canada's seabed mapping efforts said they won't take predicted ice conditions for granted.
"The plan is that the United States icebreaker, the Healy, will be leading and breaking the ice and making it easier for the Canadian icebreaker, the Louis St. Laurent, to follow through with its gear," said Jacob Verhoef, who is leading Canada's mapping project.
Verhoef said the Canadian icebreaker will tow seismic equipment that will determine the thickness of sedimentary layers in the seabed.
"Since it is towing instruments behind the vessel, it has to be able to move continuously in one direction," he said. "So that's why we decided to have, for this season, to have a second icebreaker to lead the way and to break the ice."
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said the joint effort will save both countries time and money, as well as increase the amount of data coming in for both countries.
Canada and the U.S. have long disagreed on the Northwest Passage, with Canada arguing the Arctic waterway belongs to Canada and the U.S. arguing it's an international waterway. The two nations are also in dispute over an area between Alaska and the Yukon.
