EXPLORE the MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS DIGITAL edition @ www.maineboats.com 65

LAST NOVEMBER, in the finalofficial weeks of autumn, a blast offrigid air from the Arctic swept

across Maine and the northern UnitedStates. The cold, which was likened to aSiberian express freight train, broughtbelow-zero temperatures before winterhad officially arrived.

The polar vortex is a counterclock-wise flow that usually keeps cold air overthe Arctic. When it weakens, waves ofcold air spill south into Maine. It is achilling reminder of Maine’s many con-nections to the great white north, con-nections that are being magnified andaltered now in ways we can see—andfeel.

The scientific studies and resultingheadlines about these connections areoverwhelming. When the Arctic Councilmet in Portland, Maine, last October,much of the discussion surrounding themeeting—the international group’s firstin the United States outside of Alaska—emphasized taking advantage of thethawing Northwest Passage. This echoedideas of exploration and competitionfrom more than a century before, whenBowdoin College alumni Robert Pearyand Donald MacMillan searched for theNorth Pole in Maine-built sailing vessels.In the future, instead of being the “endof the line,” Maine could instead be a“gateway,” located in a prime position toprofit from new shipping routes.

At the same meeting, scientists gavepresentations about rapid climatechanges that are affecting thousands ofpeople who live above the Arctic Circle.These changes—warming air and seatemperatures, melting sea ice, meltingglaciers, and less snow to reflect thesun—also influence the coast of Maine.

The polar vortex is an atmosphericconnection; there are others beneath theocean’s surface. The Labrador Currentoriginates in the Arctic and, along withother currents, rivers, wind, and tide,impacts the oceanography of the conti-nental shelf and the Gulf of Maine. Thecold water of the Labrador Current sinksas it moves south, contributing to what isknown as the Atlantic Meridional Over-turning Circulation (AMOC), a sort ofvacuum that sucks warm, salty water

from the tropics—the Gulf Stream—upnorth and around the globe.

In place since the end of the last IceAge, this ocean current system (some-times called the “ocean conveyor belt”)has been relatively stable over the last15,000 years. It affects our climate andevery aspect of our ocean’s ecology,including a food web that supports some500 fish species in the continental shelfecosystem of the northeastern U.S.

These tight linkages mean that anychanges in the Labrador Current impactthe food web in the North Atlantic, aswas illustrated during a climate-relatedevent in the late-20th century. In 1988-1989, the year NASA scientist JamesHansen told Congress that humans wereresponsible for an increase in globaltemperatures and writer Bill McKibbenwas making final edits to The End ofNature, Maine fishermen hauled in 12million pounds of cod, a catch not seen

in decades. More than 2,500 salmonreturned to the Penobscot River, andanglers lined the banks. The endangeredNorth Atlantic right whale continued agradual recovery.

High above the Arctic, warming tem-peratures created conditions for acceler-ated ice melt. Meltwater has to go some-where, and a large mass of it slid throughthe Canadian Archipelago into theNorthwest Atlantic. Meltwater is warmer

Arctic Warming and MaineShifting weather and ocean patterns along the coast

BY CATHERINE SCHMITT | PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETER RALSTON

A grandfather cleans arctic char and Atlantic salmon at the village of Arctic Bay, northern Baffin Island,Nunavut. Fishermen are seeing more salmon, a symptom of the changing environment.

64

Rockport-based photographer Peter Ralston traveled to theArctic and the Northwest Passage last summer and returnedwith haunting images of a landscape in flux. Shown here isa glacier face in Croker Bay off Devon Island, Nunavut.

EXPLORE the MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS DIGITAL edition @ www.maineboats.com 67

can affect patterns of temperature, salin-ity, and food web for decades.

Although the fatty copepods cameback and right whales recovered slightly,salmon and cod in many places did not.

Meltwater from both sea ice andshrinking glaciers and runoff from Arc-tic rivers swollen with increased rainfallhave altered the ocean’s circulatory sys-tem. The long-term warming trend, andthe rapid warming of the last 12 years, islikely related to the slowing of theAMOC, according to Pershing.

“Notably for our region, it tends toshift the Gulf Stream north and weakensthe Labrador Current, making the watersoff of New England warmer,” he said.“This creates a chain of events that startswith melting in Greenland and the Arc-tic, leads to warming in the Gulf ofMaine, and results in northward shifts infish and lobster and declines in subpolarspecies like cod and shrimp.”

NOAA scientists have documentedsuch shifts in many species, includingalewife, American shad, yellowtail floun-der, black sea bass, red hake, butterfish,and saury. The population center of

some species has already moved as far as30 miles north.

While some, like Atlantic herring, areexpanding their range, fish already attheir southern limit, such as capelin andAtlantic cod, are contracting in range.Cod, haddock, and halibut are movingto deeper water where it’s colder.UMaine researcher Rick Wahle is cur-rently trying to figure out if lobsters havealso moved to greater depths.

Maine hasn’t had a shrimp fishery,which targets the sub-polar species Pan-dalus borealis, since 2013. Meanwhile,Greenlanders recently had their firstcommercial fishing season for mackerel.The mackerel have attracted bluefin tunafarther north than previously reported.

Scientists with Canada’s Departmentof Fisheries and Oceans have confirmedthe presence of Atlantic salmon in riversoff Baffin Island, north of the Arctic Cir-cle. For hundreds of thousands of years,sea ice blocked the movement of speciesbetween the Pacific and Atlantic sides ofthe globe, but no more. Pink salmon areexpanding their range; Arctic and Pacificplankton have been found in the North

Atlantic. Open water has created migra-tion pathways for Pacific seabirds such astufted puffins and ancient murrelets tovisit Maine. I like to think that salmon,cod, and lobster are moving into new ter-ritory. That is, they can adapt as long asconditions do not change too quickly.

The Arctic is melting. With only athin skin of ice remaining, or no ice at allin many areas, sunlight on the surface ofthe Arctic Ocean fuels the growth of phy-toplankton. Winds blowing across thewater mix layers of water and nutrientsthat once stayed separate under the ice,increasing the annual production ofalgae 47 percent in the last 20 years,according to a recent analysis byresearchers at the Scripps Institute forOceanography at the University of Cali-fornia San Diego. More phytoplanktonand earlier blooms attract zooplanktonand their predators. Meanwhile, algalproductivity has declined in the Gulf ofMaine, partly due to increased precipita-tion and freshwater flows. Is the wholefood web shifting north, or only parts ofit? Do we know how fast these changeswill happen in the future?

and less salty than the surrounding oceanwater, and therefore less dense, so it tendsto stay at the surface. This floating layerof Arctic water soaked up sunlight, allow-

ing phytoplankton, the microscopic plantbits at the base of the ocean food web, toflourish. This growth had a ripple effectthroughout the Atlantic.

As Andy Pershing, of the Gulf ofMaine Research Institute, reported withfellow investigator Charles Greene in2007, the phytoplankton supported pop-ulations of different, smaller zooplank-ton that were less nutritious thanCalanus finmarchicus, the copepod thatusually dominates our ocean.

Calanus finmarchicus are tiny, fat, redcrustaceans eaten by Northern rightwhales and myriad small, silvery fishes,including capelin. These fish in turn areprey for larger fish like salmon and cod,and for birds and other marine mam-mals. With C. finmarchicus scarce, fishinstead had to eat the smaller, less fattyzooplankton, which meant that they, inturn, provided less energy for predators.The decline of C. finmarchicus in the1990s resulted in reduced populations ofAtlantic salmon, fewer right whale calvesbeing born, and a decline in the survivalof young cod in the Gulf of Maine, saidPershing. However, herring and haddockflourished during this period.

This alternative regime continueduntil the early 2000s, reflecting inherentoscillations in the climate system that

66 MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS | March / April 2017 | Issue 145

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The Gulf of Maine is physically connected to the rest of the globe via the Great Ocean Conveyor Beltthat transports heat around the world and affects our climate. Cold, sinking water flows south from theArctic into the North Atlantic, where it meets the warm Gulf Stream current. Warming temperatures andmelting in the Arctic has changed this circulatory pattern and affected the marine food web.

The research is ongoing, and manyMaine scientists are involved. But evenscientists are struggling to keep up withthe changes, such as the luffing of thepolar vortex and its eastward movementover Eurasia.

The change in atmospheric circula-tion is impacting Maine’s climate, accord-ing to Maine State Climatologist SeanBirkel. As the air over the Arctic warms,there is less of a temperature differencebetween the North Pole and the equator.This temperature difference, or gradient,

is what generates the polar vortex and thewesterly winds that drive our weather.

With weaker westerly winds, blockingpatterns are more likely to develop, caus-ing heat or cold waves that can persist fordays. “A blocking pattern causes heat andmoisture to build up in one place, andcold and dryness in another; in betweenis a steep gradient. When a blocking pat-tern eventually breaks down, the steepgradient that developed fuels a powerfulstorm front that can deliver extreme rainor snowfall,” said Birkel. He noted that

changes in atmospheric circulation alsocontribute to warmer winters with fewerbelow-zero days, more frequent rain, anda shorter snow season.

The lives of Arctic explorers Pearyand MacMillan were bound and definedby ice. They dreamed of the brief sum-mer period when navigation throughfloes was possible, and they could tryagain to find a way through the North-west Passage. The Arctic, with its vastareas of thin ice and open water, andMaine, with its changing seascape, arebecoming vastly different places thatthese historic navigators might no longerrecognize.

What will stay the same is Maine’sclose connection to the Arctic throughtoday’s mariners, scientists, and artistswho are documenting the changingwinds and currents that define the char-acter of our coast. ✮

Catherine Schmitt is Communications Direc-

tor for the Maine Sea Grant College Program

at the University of Maine. She is the author of

The President’s Salmon: Restoring the King

of Fish and Its Home Waters.

68 MAINE BOATS, HOMES & HARBORS | March / April 2017 | Issue 145

These Disko Bay icebergs were calved by the Jacobshavn Glacier, near the town of Ilulissat on thewest coast of Greenland. The fastest moving glacier in the world, it is featured in the film Chasing Ice.

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