Looking like the dunes of a sandy desert, this vista greeted us at sunrise one morning in the Northwest Passage. The wave crests are subdued and rounded into dune-like shapes by the presence on the water of millions of small pieces of "pancake ice." This is an early stage in the formation of sea ice, which congeals from these seeds into solid sheets. However, warmer temperatures in 2007 prevented these expanses of seed ice from solidifying. Where ordinarily we would have been fighting our way through pack ice with main force and the full strength of the ship's icebreaking equipment, our vessel smoothly cruised through the strange seas with only a whispering hiss to mark the passage of the ice platelets.