Lawrence Reuben uses an electric auger to cut a hole in about six inches of ice on the Hornaday River east of Paulatuk, NWT.
The machine does its job in four seconds.
Water and crushed ice rush to the surface as he pulls out the spiral blade. He takes a step back, turns to his daughter and says, “Best thing since sliced bread.” They both laugh at the joke before he leaves to drill the next hole.
The Hornaday River is about 25 minutes by ATV from Paulatuk – a distance of eight kilometers as the crow flies. Ruben and his wife Dianna a built a hut measuring 16 by 16 feet nclose to your bank. This is where they spend a lot of time, depressurizing and catching Arctic char.
They would be out of luck on this particular trip with their daughter and son-in-law.
Arctic char in PaulataThe UK region historically wintered in the Hornaday and Brock Rivers before returning to Darnley B.and the Arctic Ocean. But Ruben said the character's movements became unpredictable.
“They should be upriver in the fall,” said Reuben, a member of the Paulatuk Hunters and Trappers Committee. “Based on our fishing efforts lately, we haven’t caught much.”
Changes like these are why the community is collaborating with Fisheries and Oceans Canada on a research project: together they caught and tagged char last July to better understand where and when the fish spend their time.
38 Arctic char tagged with acoustic monitors
Federal scientists and Paulatuk harvesters spent four weeks catching 38 Arctic char from four locations around Darnley Sound and implanting them with acoustic transmitters.
They also installed 33 receivers in the Arctic Ocean.
The purpose of this system is to paint a picture of where the fish did or did not spend time. The tags emit a high-frequency sound that is inaudible to the human ear. When fish pass by the receivers, the receivers pick up the signal and store the data.
“We'll open up the fish, insert a tag – it's the size of a tube of lip balm – and sew it up. And then the fish continues its daily life and sends signals from the acoustic tag, which will then be collected on receivers that we put underwater,” explained Tazi Rodriguez, an aquatic biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Winnipeg.
“Next summer we will go out on boats and bring the receivers to the surface and then download files from them. And it will just be a list of all the fish passing by that were heard, and a timestamp.”
Paul Blanchfield, a federal research scientist also based in Winnipeg, said the plan was to install receivers in the freshwater lakes associated with Darnley Sound as well. As of late November, they had not yet been installed, but five were planned to be deployed throughout the winter.
Blanchfield said Fisheries and Oceans Canada has been monitoring char in the region for more than 30 years. The aim of the project, he said, is to understand which areas of Darnley Bay are most important to the species and when they leave the bay to winter.
If they collect enough data, it could also answer some other questions, such as what causes their migration, Blanchfield said.
“The Arctic is changing rapidly, and there is a very noticeable decrease in sea ice thickness in this region,” he said. “The timing of ice break-up in the spring and freezing in the fall also varies, and both of these factors may influence how much time char spend in the marine environment—and rely on food resources in that area—compared to the freshwater habitat of their annual life cycle.”
The service life of acoustic tags is four years. But there is a chance that the fish will be caught before the batteries run out. Scientists expect this to happen to at least some of them – and each fish was also marked with an external tag on the dorsal fin.
If the harvesters catch a char, which is part of the project, Blanchfield said they can either release the fish back into the water or return the transmitter from inside the fish to the local hunters and trappers committee for a fee.
Blanchfield said one fish was caught in the net last summer while he and Rodriguez were in the community. “We haven't heard yet how many more people have been caught,” he said.
Climate warming and permafrost melting
Reuben said he and his wife remember 2010 as a “big year” when they noticed climate change was having an impact on the region.
Usually in April, people have to get out chisels and augers to make holes in the ice for fishing, he said. That year, Reuben said, the Hornaday River began to flow on April 25—a month earlier than usual.
Erosion and landslides are also factors.
“If you look at the river system, it looks like someone took a rake to the banks of the river and just cleared it off,” he said. He said adding silt to the water makes rivers an “unsuitable” place for char to spawn – over the past eight years he and his wife have caught many fish with unspent eggs.
Back on the ice of the Hornaday River, Ruben kneels next to one of the holes he drilled. He swings his 1.5-foot long fishing stick up and down, causing the silver hook and bait at the end of the line to dance in the water. Locals call this type of fishing “swinging”.
He looks down at the hole and the dark water below, waiting for a glimpse of the species on which his community depends.
“The importance of our char as a source of livelihood is huge for the Paulatuk community,” he says. “You can't reduce it in any way, shape or form.”
