Navigation in the North

Photo by Bill Kinze

Oliver Kruess, Captain of the National Geographic Explorer, met with us to discuss the difficulties of navigating in the North.

If Captain Kruess were to navigate by a normal compass, he could be up to 70 degrees off course! This is because the North Pole and the Magnetic North pole are not in the same place. Not only that, but the Magnetic North Pole moves over time. The chart below shows the movement of the Magnetic North Pole from the 1600s to 2000.

Below is a map from the Bridge, showing the Magnetic variation to be 42 degrees and 30 minutes west.

Photo by Betsy Wilkening

Distortion of maps in the Polar Regions is another challenge. Since the world is round, it is difficult to represent it correctly on a flat map. If it were shown accurately, it would look something like this:

Many cartographers fill in the empty spots, making the polar regions much larger than they are in real life and causing another headache for Captain Kruess.

Some countries measure water depth in meters and others in fathoms. Since Canada and Greenland use different measurement types, constant conversion had to be done depending on where the map was printed.

1 fathom = 1.8288 meters

The final challenge Captain Kruess addressed was ice. Glaciers and sea ice are constantly changing the landscape. Our ship had an Ice Navigation Officer, Mangnus Lundberg, who looked out for icebergs and helped to chart a safe route for our ship. Here's an example of a satellite image he shared with us that showed ice entering an area the crew chose to avoid.