IQALUIT – There are more than 60 words to describe sea ice in Inuktitut.
For Nunavut hunters, words are essential when traveling on an icy ocean highway by snowmobiles or the dog team.
In Pond Inlet, north of Baffin Island, Andrew Arreak spends a lot of time compiling those words and their definitions. He says he intends to share his list with the community and local schools to help people stay safe.
“I’m trying to correct all these words so that he knows what to expect when they come out on the ice.”
Arreak runs the Nunavut operations of SmartICE, an organization based in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nunatsiavut. It combines local knowledge of sea ice with modern technology, using sensors to determine ice thickness and to collect data on ice conditions that communities can use when heading for ice.
Although SmartICE has continued its research throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, thanks to its staff in Nunavut, other scientists and researchers in the south have been stranded outside the territory this year.
“SmartICE didn’t miss a beat during COVID,” says Trevor Bell, a professor at Memorial University in St. Louis. John’s, NL. And the founder of SmartICE.
He says research has always been done locally.
“We put our monitoring tools in the hands of community members from the beginning. They are able to operate and generate information about sea ice … without any intervention from us.
“It’s operated by communities for northern communities. The benefit of this is seen in a year like this.”
Nunavut is a year-round research center, but especially in the summer months. In 2017, for example, the Nunavut Research Institute authorized 136 research projects involving 662 people.
In March, the Nunavut Chief Public Health Officer restricted travel to the territory only to residents. Travel between communities was largely unlimited, except for blockages in the spring and November.
Milla Rautio, a researcher at the Université du Quebec, has been traveling to Nunavut every summer of 2014 to study changes in the Arctic lakes around Cambridge Bay and Victoria Island.
This year, in light of travel restrictions, Rautio appealed to community members to conduct their research. She sent sampling equipment to Cambridge Bay and remotely supervised a small research team.
“I was able to get everything I needed and even more.”
Rautio says that if Nunavummiut collects evidence, it means he could continue his research throughout the year.
“Instead of my students and I going to Cambridge Bay once a year, usually in August, doing this sampling snapshot, we now have this opportunity to understand what’s going on in the north throughout the year,” she says.
– I shouldn’t have gone there.
Rautio has worked for years to connect with students and other members of the Cambridge Bay community. She says these connections were essential for her research to continue in the midst of the pandemic.
Thanks to local knowledge, Rautio’s research team also discovered something he was unlikely to have encountered. A crystal clear lake once used for fishing near the community had suddenly become disturbed.
“I’m not sure I would have known about it without them”
Heidi Swanson, a professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, spends time in all three territories studying summer fish. She also conducted her research with the help of residents this year.
“In Kugluktuk, Nunavut, we have made our northern research partner do a better job than we have ever done in the past,” Swanson told the Arctic Net annual conference on December 9th.
Like Rautio, Swanson has established connections in several northern communities.
“Where relationships are stronger, we have had a greater ability to adapt.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on December 26, 2020.