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David Thoreson has sailed to the ends of the Earth and now carries a message, as if gathered from sea winds.The 50-year-old Iowan and the crew of the 64-foot cutter Ocean Watch finished an epic 382-day journey of 27,524 nautical miles around the Americas on June 17, ending on the very dock they started last May in Seattle.

On his first attempt to sail through the Northwest Passage in 1994, he was stopped cold by ice; his second trip in 2007 was a rare success. This time, Ocean Watch was among a circus of boats ripping through, the ice a victim of a warming climate, he said."A sure sign that change is afoot was seeing standard-production sailboats with families going through the Northwest Passage."

ISSUED BY ENVIRONMENT CANADA ON 01 JULY 2010.

Taking all of the above into consideration, the current pack ice pattern in the Western Arctic resembles that normally seen in the last two weeks of July. The consolidated sea ice pattern in the Central Arctic at the end of June resembles conditions normally seen at this time, except for the region spanning Barrow Strait to M'Clure Strait which more closely resembles that seen at the end of July or in early August.

The wandering grey whale that bewildered scientists after appearing off the coast of Israel last month is now paying a visit to northeastern Spain.The sighting near Barcelona Harbour means the whale, believed to be one that would normally swim past Vancouver Island, travelled about 3,000 kilometres since it was last spotted 23 days earlier.

Although scientists have not been able to positively identify where the 12-metre whale came from, the most likely scenario is that it's part of the population that would normally swim past Vancouver Island, migrating from birthing lagoons in Mexico to the Bering Sea, and that it swam through the Northwest Passage in an increasingly ice-free Arctic.

There is speculation the whale was following food -- some observers say there are signs populations are dropping, possibly because warming waters mean less food. The tiny marine life they thrive on needs cooler temperatures to survive.