Arctic Seawater Project

Check out a summary of our latest results below 👇👇

Hello! Please join us for a Pizza Party on July 23 at the South Camp Inn! We have a number of activities and info on the contaminants that we measure in Arctic char around Resolute Bay and in the seawater!

At the beginning of November Amber and I visited Cambridge Bay, NU. Amber has been many times for sampling seawater off the coast of Cambridge Bay but it was my first time. We met a lot of people and learned a lot about the culture and history of Cambridge Bay.

Back in March 2024, the Viventem team did our seawater sampling in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut. In the photos, you can see Gabriel Ferland and Brodie using an ice auger to drill the hole. Through the hole, they cast the water sampler and fill up the bottles to ship back to our lab. Still very cold at the time -19 to -30! The flag demarks the location of where the water sampler is suspended under ice. all photos credited to Imbeau, Viventem and shared with permission.

Our event is off and kicking in Nain! Thanks for the visit, Grade 8 class from Jens Haven Memorial School! We are here all day, cmon down, just by the community freezer down the hall.

Hello! We are in Nain to do our seawater sampling and are hosting a meet 'n greet Nunatsiavut Research Centre on Tues Sept 10. We will be on hand to talk about the project, run some demonstrations, snacks and prizes raffle too. Come on by! Starting at 10 am.

Northern Contaminants Program Results Workshop in Ottawa was held in the last week of Feb. We had an opportunity to share our project on the last day of the meeting in the community-based monitoring session. The workshop also features updates from other projects and key speakers, mostly Inuit but also Dene Nation. It was our first time meeting Beverly Maksagak! We also enjoyed time spent with our collaborators from Nunatsiavut Research Centre Liz Pijogge and Carla Pamak.

Back in June, our new collaborator Saagiaqtuq was contracted to do our seawater sampling for contaminants analysis, including deploying and retrieving the passive samplers (filters). Great set-up Saa! in the images below, you can see how he used Peter Amarualik's design by suspending the passive sampler on a rope through ice. The rope is connected to a wooden stake. After 6 weeks, the passive sampler is removed. This year was challenging - it was very warm and Saa had to deal with learning new equipment. Great job, Saa and we hope you will continue to work with us! All photos shared with permission from Saa.

Inuit Circumpolar Council has made a great video on the issue of Arctic contaminants and the long history of Inuit advocating for protecting the Arctic from harmful pollutants on a global scale.

Uqiuqtatuq kakiatuq - Pristine Arctic?- English In Inuktitut our new video on contaminants is called “Uqiuqtatuq kakiatuq – Pristine Arctic?” In this video we tell the story of how contaminants make their ...