Canadian military scientists once again have plans in place to monitor any ships approaching the Northwest Passage. The monitoring of the approaches is part of the Canadian federal Northern Watch program. The program was put in place to tests any surveillance devices that the country uses to keep an eye out for foreign ships and any other vessels sailing the Arctic waterway. Northern Watch was launched back in 2008, but because of logistical issues the program was scaled back.

Defence and Research Development Canada’s director general of science and technology operations, Rick Williams, told CBC News that, “We discovered that we needed to do some more planning and preparation.”

Williams also said that work on this year’s Northern Watch program was delayed in order for him to gather the team back together, re-iterate what the program expectations were and rebuild the base camp on Devon Island.

“There was mould on the inside of some of the buildings and at some of the washing facilities and some of the storage facilities,” he said.

There was also work that needed to be done when it came to the team travelling. Because the existing route from a remote lookout site to their main camp was deemed too dangerous, the crew, along with everything else, had to find a new, safer path.

“The weather conditions are pretty variable. Things can change dramatically and [in a] very short amount of time,” William said. “If someone gets hurt, we had to have plans in place to be able to do things like medical care, evacuations.”

Even with the logistical issues they encountered, the Northern Watch team installed a selection of underwater surveillance sensors this summer that gathered around four weeks of data in the Barrow Straight.

“We’ve got pictures of vessels that have actually gone by the test set-up over the course of this summer,” Williams said. “The kind of information we gather, the kinds of pictures we can take from the shoreline — that demonstrates we’re getting smarter about how to do that channel surveillance.”