NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Gwich'in Settlement Area

Tags: marine ecosystem, Beaufort shelf

Objective(s): To continue annual collection of relevant data on aspects the Beaufort shelf marine ecosystem.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No. 5753. The objective is continued annual collection of relevant data on aspects the Beaufort shelf marine ecosystem. Research activity in the Beaufort region is a brief mission at sea in the autumn of each year to recover and replace the observing system that acquires these data year round. The research activities at home-base are mobilization for and demobilization from the annual mission, processing and analysis of each year’s data collections and preparation of informative data products for use by northern people, communities and management boards, for territorial and federal governments and for the private sector. We use specialized ocean-science instruments to monitor the marine ecosystem year-round without human interaction. The instruments, within watertight cylinders, have electronics to operate the sensors attached to them, small computers to manage data sampling, digital media for storing data, and batteries. For untended operation at sea, they are shackled onto an ‘oceanographic mooring’, basically a rope connecting submerged floats to an anchor at the seabed. To avoid loss to moving ice or stormy seas, no component of a mooring rises above 30-m depth. Moorings are deployed and recovered in collaboration with the Canadian Coast Guard, using CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier. The CCG sends this light icebreaker annually to the Beaufort for a Western Arctic Patrol; it is used for science when homebound in the autumn. The ship is large enough to service moorings reliably and safely and provides dependable annual support to ocean monitoring. The work at each mooring site takes no more than two hours each year. Data that have been recorded during the year prior to recovery are returned to DFO’s Institute of Ocean Sciences (Sidney, BC) for the processing required to extract ecosystem information. The complexity of processing and the large amount of data recorded each year require 6-12 months of effort to completion. We plan continued communication via channels used in past years: 1) annual brief SRL reports to the Aurora Research Institute; 2) detailed annual DFO science cruise reports; 3) tri-annual State of Canada’s Arctic Seas reporting; 4) opportunistic science talks to the FJMC (usually in Winnipeg); 4) opportunistic MPA meetings (e.g. ANMPA monitoring plan); 5) occasional community visits; 6) occasional participation in northern science conferences (usually in Inuvik); 7) other opportunities that arise. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from: October 22 - December 31, 2023