While Bonita LeBlanc, a 16 year old student from Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia Canada, has been helping out with Arctic research for the past two years, the teen has never herself been to the Arctic. Well, that is about to change.

For the past couple of years, LeBlanc has been helping Arctic researchers track ocean currents by sending bottles with messages in them to the Arctic. This week she is heading to the North and will be dropping a few bottles into the Arctic sea herself.

“I’d like to see where they go,” she said. “This is the chance of a lifetime.”

In the last two years she has filled 580 bottles with messages that were given to the crew of the coast guard ship Louis S. St-Laurent. The bottles were all dropped at different predetermined spots in the North in order to research current flows.

6 of those 580 bottles have been found, which LeBlanc is very happy with, because usually only one bottle out of every 25 is recovered.

“I’ve been very lucky,” she said. “Every single bottle that’s been found is from the first drop that I did.”

The grade 11 student, who is considering a future in oceanography, is getting the chance to spend two weeks on the coast guard research vessel Amundsen in the Arctic. Her Arctic stay is part of the Youth Science Canada program. While there are other students taking part in the program, LeBlanc is the only one heading to the Arctic.

While on board she will be assisting scientists with experiments, while also dedicating time to her own research, which she started in Grade 8. Her interested in ocean currents started after she read a Canadian Geographic article about Eddy Carmack, a scientists who uses drift bottles in order to study currents.

“I contacted him and he was just thrilled and surprised that someone as young as myself — I was 13 at the time — found interest in this,” LeBlanc said.

For LeBlanc, the trip is more than just an opportunity. She believes it will help her decided if a career in oceanography is something she will want in the future.

“I can’t wait to be on the ship. I’m living my dream.”