A new exhibition that opened at the Anchorage Museum last week takes visitors inside a replica of a research vessel and gives them a chance to glimpse what it’s like to study the Arctic.
Visitors enter the exhibit called “Arctic Marine Science: Sikuliaq to Shore” through the stern of the vessel. They walk under a tall crane looking at science instruments on the walls, surrounded by deep blue all around – a recreation of the research vessel Sikuliaq. They make their way onto the bridge, where a captain's chair faces a ceiling-high projector screen showing a vast ocean that changes from stormy swells to chunks of pancake ice.
“We're looking off the bow of Sikuliaq,” said Rachel Boesenberg, associate curator at the museum, on a recent tour of the exhibit. “Visitors at this point have walked through the whole ship.”
The Sikuliaq is an icebreaker operated by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and owned by the National Science Foundation. Its name comes from the Iñupiaq word for young sea ice.
The ship is homeported in Seward, but each year, dozens of scientists from across the country and the world board it to traverse the Arctic and Pacific oceans off Alaska's coast. They collect samples from the sea floor, send remotely operated vehicles to the least accessible parts of the ocean and deploy hydrophones to record sounds of marine mammals.
Brendan Smith is the communications director at the North Pacific Research Board that funds many projects run from the vessel. He dreamed up the idea for the exhibition several years ago.
“I said to myself, ‘what if we bring the Sikuliaq… into the museum?’” he said. “How do we do that? How do we give people an experience that makes them feel like they're out at sea?”
The result is an immersive experience, focused on how the ship is used to study the environment, and the people who bring that knowledge to life, Smith said.
The replica includes microscope stations to look at plankton, a gallery of Arctic-themed illustrations, and sketching tables for children and adults. Smith, who attended the exhibit’s opening, said it blends science and art.
“It was beautiful,” he said. “Seeing how people can learn about the science, but also appreciating the beauty of the science, appreciating the beauty in plankton and diatoms, and creatures that are so tiny that you need a microscope to see, and when you see them, you're just like, I can't believe there are things like that in the ocean.”
There’s also a station with Arctic soundscapes, where visitors can learn about gathering and analyzing sounds from underwater. They can also listen to a piercing bowhead whale call, or Boesenberg’s favorite – “the otherworldly sounding bearded seal.”
Another big part of the exhibition is the community-focused gallery that shows how scientists collaborate with coastal communities and Indigenous knowledge holders to look at the changing environment, Boesenberg said.
“Everything is interconnected, and every part matters, every voice matters,” she said.
One of the exhibit’s consultants was Harmony Jade Sugaq Wayner, an Indigenous scholar from Naknek in Southwest Alaska. She was a part of the Sikuliaq research team in 2019 and is now network coordinator for the Western Alaska Landscape Initiative at the Alaska Conservation Foundation.
Wayner suggested curators include what Arctic research means for Alaska Native people whose food security and culture are tied to marine mammals and fish.
“I think we forget that humans are part of the ecosystem and not separated,” Wayner said. “We see a lot of big graphs about climate change and the extent of sea ice and those big global processes, but we don't see the joy of living our culture in coastal Alaska and river Alaska.”
The exhibition runs through April 2027 on the first floor of the Anchorage Museum. There are also science demonstrations and activities on Thursday and Saturday afternoons.
