By George F. Lee, Star-Bulletin
Christopher Guay and Gregory Kurras are headed for the
Arctic aboard the USS Hawksbill.

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Isle scientists
heading beneath
polar ice cap

They'll be conducting
research on a Navy nuclear
submarine for 74 days

By Helen Altonn

Star-Bulletin

Two Hawaii scientists are leaving the tropics today to investigate what's going on under the polar ice cap.

Christopher Guay and Gregory Kurras are among five civilian scientists on a 74-day Arctic mission in the nuclear submarine USS Hawksbill. Two Navy scientists also are aboard.

A 1987 Punahou graduate, Guay is working on a doctorate degree in chemical oceanography at Oregon State University.

Kurras is a University of Hawaii marine geologist and geophysicist. He works for UH's Hawaii Mapping Research Group, which recently located the U.S. aircraft carrier Yorktown, sunk in World War II.

The Pearl Harbor-based Hawksbill has been converted into a research laboratory but will also be "a fully armed submarine, doing under-ice maneuvers," Guay said.

It expects to break the ice canopy Aug. 3, the 40th anniversary of the first Arctic nuclear submarine cruise, by the USS Nautilus.

Guay went on a similar, 56-day cruise last year on a Navy submarine out of Connecticut. He is studying Arctic circulation, the chemical and nuclear contents of the water, the pollutants and the effect on climate changes.

Drums with radioactive waste were dumped in shallow water on the Russian side of the Arctic, and industrial pollutants were released in rivers flowing into the Arctic, he said. "It's still a really sticky question to figure out where this stuff is going to go."

Kurras will map the mid-ocean ridge over the top of the planet using three systems mounted on the submarine.

They include a swath mapping system, a "subbottom profiler" to peer about 660 feet into the ocean floor and a sonar system to examine layers of the Earth.

"There is no way to map through the ice," Kurras said. "The only way you can do it is with a submarine, to go under the ice."

Scientists are trying to understand the movement of the plates making up Earth's shell, Kurras said.

The plates are moving apart at different speeds, and the North Pole has the slowest-spreading center on the planet, he said. "Studying the extremes, the fastest and slowest, we hope to better understand the mechanisms involved."

The researchers also hope to piece together the eruptive history of the mid-ocean ridge by looking into upper layers of Earth's crust, Kurras said.

Guay said global warming, ozone depletion and air quality are important issues in the polar regions. "They are critical places for the Earth's climate."

The civilian scientists were specially selected for Arctic work. They had to pass the Navy physical and talk to a psychiatrist and undersea medical officer, Guay said. "Out there we're really on our own. We have to improvise, to take care of things when they go wrong."

While he loves to swim and body-surf, Guay has spent a lot of time on ice. He worked in Canada, flying in and out by helicopter and using snowmobiles to study how water and pollutants circulate under the ice. He tracked Arctic river waters several summers on Russian boats.

Kurras has worked in the research submarine Alvin, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. But 74 days in the Hawksbill is "a new thing," he said.

"It's the easiest way to get to the North Pole, with a hot cup of coffee and a warm bunk every day," he said. "And you don't have to wake up to polar bears."