Experts on Ice

"Listen, you should think about coming to the sea ice class on Thursday," Willy Weeks said to me in November. "We've got a real expert coming as a guest lecturer."

I'm used to Geophysical Institute staffers encouraging me to attend classes on their subjects. They find the stuff fascinating, and naturally expect everyone else will too. But for Professor Weeks to offer a visitor as bait was not ordinary; he has spent years on ice, so to speak, and has a yard-long list of publications testifying to his own expertise on the subject.

But he wasn't kidding. The visiting expert was Kenneth Tuvak of Barrow. Weeks studies ice, but Tuvak lives it. I went to class.

Tuvak's expertise sits gracefully on his broad shoulders. Apparently he finds it easy to deal with professional scientists; he has been doing so since 1947, when he started working for the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory. Listening to the anecdotes through which he conveyed his information, I grew to suspect that one reason he's enjoyed the work is because he finds the professionals enormously entertaining.

For example, to underline the importance of being patient in assessing sea ice, he told of the misadventures of scientists trying to site a major research camp well out on the pack. He explained that the ideal site for such a camp would combine two kinds of ice: thick and stable multi-year ice, marked by substantial hummocks on its surface, should lie adjacent to flat annual ice of size and thickness adequate to serve as a landing field for C-130 supply aircraft. Pushed by deadlines set in Washington, D.C., where knowledge of sea ice is not very great, the scientists decided to site their camp on ice with low hummocks--too low, in Tuvak's judgment. It meant the ice was thinner, more likely to come apart if winds and current changed.

They did and it did. A big lead opened right through the camp, separating the living quarters from the mess hall. The stranded scientists could only watch their out-of-reach food drift away. It wasn't a disaster, only a monstrous inconvenience, and Tuvak's chuckling about it years after the fact seemed a proper response.

The need for patience was the first lesson he learned from older hunters when he began trekking across the ice: "Don't get excited," he explained as it had been explained to him. After that came knowledge, the gathered observations and analysis of what had been observed.

Although Tuvak was willing to present much information in customary classroom style---for example, defining and giving traditional names for different configurations of sea ice---that clearly wasn't what he meant by knowledge. As he spoke, he was conveying what I labeled mentally as a systems ecology of sea ice. He saw and explained the ice-covered sea as a set of dynamic interactions, in which understanding wind and water movement are as integral to proper knowledge of sea ice as is the frozen substance itself.

He illustrated that with an anecdote underlining the third important lesson he wanted to convey to the students: the need to be alert. He told of going with a companion on a seal hunt over apparently stable ice, when "far to the north we could hear the ice grinding, grinding together." He bagged his seal, then realized the ice had fallen silent. The current had changed, and that changed the safety of the ice on which they stood. The hunters escaped back to shore in the nick of time, as the entire raft of ice headed out to sea.

Tuvak began and ended his talk with gentle encouragement for the students: pursuing knowledge was a good thing. He hoped they'd go on to teach, since it is an important responsibility for those who have knowledge to see that it is passed on.

Kenneth Tuvak carned his responsibility well in that class. This student, at least, was reminded of how enjoyable it can be to learn from a real expert.