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National Post

Royal Canadian Navy ship takes 'amazing' four month voyage to Antarctica and back

The Royal Canadian Navy returned to Halifax Friday from a deployment to Antarctica with tales of spotting exotic wildlife and samples that could lead to a greater understanding of climate change. Article content Article content HMCS Margaret Brooke's four-month voyage took the Arctic and offshore patrol ship to South America and beyond, logging close to 25,000 nautical miles, or 46,300 kilometres. Article content Article content 'It's been just such an amazing experience to visit an area of the world where less than one per cent of the world's population has visited,' said Cmdr. Teri Share, the skipper of Margaret Brooke. Article content 'Not only were we able to do all this amazing work with science in the south, within Antartica, but the relationships that we built with Latin American countries on the way south and north was just phenomenal,' Share said. 'It's in an area where the RCN hasn't been able to really operate in the last couple of decades. So, it's been amazing to be able to help build those relationships again.' Article content The ship, crewed by 83 people, carried both sailors and scientists. Article content 'We traveled to the South Shetland Islands and then along the Antarctic Peninsula collecting a lot of sea floor data and water column data to understand the effect of climate change on retreating glaciers,' said Alex Normandeau, a research scientist from Natural Resources Canada who made the trip with Margaret Brooke. Article content Article content Article content Article content One of their tasks was to learn more about how glaciers are retreating. Article content 'Some of the things we were looking at (are) where glaciers were positioned, for example, 50 or 100 years ago and how fast that retreat happened, and to do that we collect some sediment cores to go back in time,' Normandeau said. Article content Scientists plan to start analyzing those samples at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography next week. Article content 'When we open those cores and look at the different layers that we see in there, that's when we'll have a better story to tell about climate change,' said the marine geologist. Article content 'We hope to learn about the rate of glacier retreat related to climate change over the years and how that has evolved through time. So, has it been increasing over the last 10 years or the last 20 years?' Article content