Efforts to ensure fish stocks stay strong and healthy around Rankin Inlet have continued in earnest this summer, although they have hit a few lumps along the way.
Aquatic science biologist Connor Faulkner has been employed by Fisheries and Oceans throughout the summer. He said he and his colleagues arrived in Rankin Inlet at the beginning of August and were scheduled to wrap up their activities on Aug. 25.
Faulkner said the majority of the group's work surrounded the turning over of their acoustic telemetry array, currently consisting of 39 receivers.
He said the majority of the receivers are in a marine environment, but they do have two in fresh water to help with their fish-tracking project.
"We're adding five new receivers so that, by the end of the year, we'll have a total of 44 receivers around Rankin Inlet to track fish," said Faulkner.
"The five additional receivers that we put out this past week are currently assisting us in helping track Arctic char and Greenland cod. We attempted to tag lump fish (also known locally as nitisa} throughout August, but we weren't successful in those efforts.
"We may have been just a bit too late. It seems, from other literature and people getting them as bycatch in their char nets, that they come in-shore just after ice-off in July, potentially spawn and move back out, so we may have just missed that window.
"We're going to continue our efforts throughout the duration of our stay and, if we're unsuccessful, then we'll just have to, maybe, tack on a week to the end of our trip and continue our efforts."
Turning over an array comes with a fair amount of work. Faulkner said the process includes going to each individual station, retrieving the receiver that's deployed for just under a year, bringing it to the surface, cleaning it up, performing maintenance on it, changing the batteries, making sure the unit is functioning properly, downloading all the data and then reprogramming the units and putting them back down at their stations to track fish for another year.
He said Fisheries and Oceans is still not sure of how important a role the lump fish plays in all things fishy in the North. The interest in getting more information on lump fish is because it's potentially going to be listed at a species at risk in certain locations across its range.
"There's a decent amount of data and information around the Atlantic side (Newfoundland and those fisheries), but there's next to nothing known about the Arctic subpopulation. So, before anything can move ahead, proper consultations need to go through with local communities that could potentially be affected by such listings. We also need science advice to, kind of, guide those decisions," said Faulkner.
"Our role in the taking of lump fish is that we're hoping to get information on the areas they use, the areas that are important to them, and are they doing those inshore/offshore migrations in the summer to spawn like they do over in, say, Scandanavia and Norway? We're also hoping to get a bit of information on diet, so that would, sort of, tie into what their role is in the trophic food web of Western Hudson Bay and how significant could that species be?
"It's all about gathering information on the lump fish that would be used in those conversations about its potential listing down the road.
"Right now, I'd like to extend a huge thank you to the Rankin Inlet Hunter's and Trapper's Organization, The Kivalliq Wildlife Board and the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board for supporting all the research work that we're doing in partnership in Rankin Inlet, as well as our local field assistant (Sonny Ittinuar) and the individuals from Fisheries and Oceans (Amanda Olsen) and the University of Laval (Bastien Rubin), who have been working this summer."
