Photos: Touring the Sikuliaq

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Michael Hoshlyk the captain of the RV Sikuliaq gives a press tour of the new vessel in Seward, AK on Friday, March 6, 2015. The new 261-foot research vessel Sikuliaq is home ported in Seward Alaska. The University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences oceanographic research vessel is designed for work in polar and subpolar conditions. The ice capable vessel is scheduled to leave for ice trials within the month.

In the Arctic Ocean, first-year ice – the thinner and flatter layer that freezes in the winter but melts each summer – is where much of the climate change action happens.

First-year ice is becoming more dominant in the Arctic ice mix as very old and thick ice becomes rare. Spring and summer sunlight penetrates the thinner ice, so more plankton blooms are proliferating below it. Its dynamic freeze-and-melt cycles are bringing changes to the chemistry of the ocean and the atmosphere above it. And, according to a long-term trend measured by satellite over nearly four decades, its annual melt is getting progressively bigger, affecting ice-dependent animals like polar bears and walruses and causing conditions that feed into an ever-warming spiral in the far north.

Now a new research vessel will bring scientists right to the edge and into the midst of that important thin ice. The ship has an appropriate name: Sikuliaq, an Inupiaq word meaning "young sea ice."

Read more: New research vessel named and equipped for journeys into thin Arctic ice