Copyright for the images is with the authors. Please get in touch if you are interested in using any of our photos.
The moonrise at twilight above the old Anglican mission house on Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island. Dating back to 1916, the abandoned building has found new occupants in the form of black guillemots. It is the only known nesting colony in the Yukon, and the largest in the Western Arctic. Photo credit: Sandra Angers-BlondinThe back of the “bone house” where European whalers processed the carcasses of bowhead whales on Qikiqtaruk-Herschel Island. This is also the location of a hanging where European justice was imposed on the local community around 100 years ago. Photo credit: Isla H. Myers-SmithTo celebrate the summer solstice on the 21st of June, researchers burn a giant mountain goat effigy in a night-long party on the shores of Kluane Lake. Photo credit: Sandra Angers-BlondinThe Northern Whaling and Trading Company warehouse building where we now store our scientific equipment and food supplies. Photo credit: Sandra Angers-BlondinPauline Cove or Ilutaq on Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island is a sheltered stop for sailing boats travelling the Northwest Passage. This settlement site has been used by the Inuvialuit for centuries and was an important outpost for European Whalers and the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) at the turn of the last century because of its sheltered waters along this exposed Arctic coastline. Photo credit: Sandra Angers-BlondinThe graves of European whalers from a drones-eye view surrounded by dense shrub on Qikiqtaruk – Herschel Island. Whaling was a dangerous occupation and many young and old men old lost their lives here, far from their families and homelands. Photo credit: Jeffrey T. KerbyA snowy owl (Bubo scandiacus) perched on top of the entrance to an ice house. Built by whalers as a means of storing food, now the raised surface of the ice house provides a vantage point for predators like this snowy owl – a place from where they can scan the landscape and spot lemmings and voles. Photo credit: Gergana N. DaskalovaMost travellers to Qikiqtaruk now arrive by motor boat, snowmobile, helicopter or plane. The island does not have an official landing strip, so a classic photo to take is of a Twin Otter plane with tundra tires landing next to the “not an official airstrip” sign. Photo credit: Isla H. Myers-SmithThese structures made of driftwood on Qikiqtaruk are weather shelters to protect tents and campers from the high winds and stormy weather that sometimes batter the island. Photo credit: Sandra Angers-BlondinIsla Myers-Smith in the ice house, looking up from the bottom of a dynamite-blasted hole in the permafrost. The ice houses were built by the whalers in the late 1800s, and are still used to store our frozen food. Photo credit: Jeffrey T. Kerby Looking like a hobbit house, the ice house is the historic equivalent of a freezer sheltering a storage pit in the permafrost. This is the last standing ice house on Qikiqtaruk as the others have collapsed over time with thaw and degradation of their wooden structures. Photo credit: Sandra Angers-Blondin Santeri Lehtonen observing ice crystals formed in the sub-zero temperatures below ground. In high-latitude ecosystems, the ground stays frozen year-round below the surface – this is known as permafrost. Photo credit: Jeffrey T. Kerby
Copyright for the images is with the authors. Please get in touch if you are interested in using any of our photos.
Arctic from Above 