In August 2019, an Arctic research vessel, the MV
William Kennedy, anchored off the shore of Southampton Island, at the north end of Canada’s Hudson Bay. A group of researchers set off in a Zodiac, across waters that 30 years ago would have been covered with ice, even at this time of the year. Now there was only open water, revealing a seabed that had never before been mapped.
Southampton Island was bare of any vegetation—scoured flat by ice. But beneath the waves was vibrant with color. Tangles of
Saccharina latissima, or sugar kelp, floated in dense, five-meter canopies, olive green against the Arctic blue. Another algae,