Deploying Eckstein Boats in Utqiagvik, Alaska

By Jessica Levine, 6th Grade Teacher, Eckstein Middle School, Seattle, Washington

The grain is roughest at the stern. Sharpie markers seem to glide more smoothly over the top and bottom and even along the port and starboard sides. Despite this, drawings of paw prints and animal tracks of Arctic animals appear on the small 5cm square stern of many of the little wooden boats. The names of animals in Iñupiat or English or scientific Latin adorn surfaces. There are beautiful drawings of these creatures. Arctic Hare. Beluga Whale. Musk Ox. Arctic Tern. Tundra Swan. Snowy Owl. Wolf. Narwal. Walrus. Ring Seal. Polar Bear.

These small wooden boats are part of Float Your Boat, the educational outreach project of the International Arctic Buoy Program. This is the fifth year my 6th graders participated in the project. I was first introduced to it through my graduate school friend Guy, a former fellow 6th grade science and climate educator who invited me to participate with him in this project during remote learning in 2020. He is friends with Dave Forcucci, a retired Coast Guard science liaison and with them both, and some of Guy’s students, I got to tour the US Coast Guard cutter Healy. Remarkably, 10 boats from current 8th graders that were part of the North Pole deployment in 2022 have discovered on the coast of Iceland.

Each year, students were engaged in the project. It’s a clear connection to their studies of Ocean Currents, and later to the unit on Earth’s Changing climate. Yet, this time, I was going to deploy their boats on the Arctic Sea ice.

I traveled to Utqiagvik, Alaska with Ignatius Rigor and members of the research team. Using satellite imagery and radar data, Ignatius had selected a flat spot to set the boats, and the weather buoys. Late on Wednesday afternoon, we arrived by snow machine to the flat spot on the ice at 71.20.4643 N and 156.40.2212 W.

First, I stomped out the shape of an orca whale in the snow, a design made by Sylvie N, an 8th grade student TA of mine, who participated in the FYB program two years ago. Wearing two layers of long johns and insulated bibs, and a large parka borrowed from the Polar Science Center over my two layers of long john tops and a fleece jacket, I was warm, and then, suddenly much warmer from all that stomping. I hadn’t moved that much on the ice yesterday and now, I kept looking over my shoulder to check the pattern as I shuffled in the few inches of snow above the ice. From the drone we had confirmation of the shape. I smiled.

Then we unloaded the cardboard boxes from the sled of the snow machine and arranged them in this space. At first, we marked the edge with two boats deep, but realized we needed to space them out further. We marked the eye of the orca with a GPS buoy and put another one at the tail. All told there were 150 boats from Eckstein, and another 50 or so from Eben Hopson Middle School decorated just that morning, and another 100 from schools around the country.

I’d seen pictures of the deployment of other fleets; I’ve showed my students a video to hook them in the project. Now, here I was, on the Arctic Sea ice with the Float Your Boat program and the IABP GPS buoy. It was a dream come true. We had fun deploying the fleet, that’s for sure. There was certainly whimsy, and light--while the drone was flying overhead we decided to make some snow angels.

Later that afternoon, we went out towards Point Barrow. We didn’t make it all the way as we had to stop for two polar bears! What an exciting day out on the sea ice.

Thank you to the Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington and the International Arctic Buoy Programme, and to the Iñupiat who have stewarded this land, water, and ice for generations. We hope our participation in this citizen science project strengthens our global understanding of Arctic Sea Ice, climate change, and the impacts of thinning sea ice.