Matt Gilbert: water temperature and Arctic char

Matt Gilbert, a fisheries biologist with the University of New Brunswick, describes his research in the Cambridge Bay, Nunavut area on how rising water temperatures affect Arctic Char.

• Transcript

  I'm Matt Gilbert. I'm a Weston Family fellow in northern research at the University of New Brunswick, and I'm up here working with Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Cambridge Bay, NU.

  My research focuses on the effects of rising temperature on Arctic char, and particularly on their migrations and their overwintering bioenergetics. I do my research in the field using mobile research infrastructure mobile laboratories, which are shipping containers outfitted with solar and wind power and a fully equipped laboratory that allow us to make sensitive physiological measurements in really remote locations on Arctic char.

  Some of our primary findings so far have been that in warm years, water temperatures can reach levels that cause severe impairments for Arctic char health. Namely, they can impair their heart function and cause heart failure. And of course, those types of impairments would limit their migration success and could cause a reduction in their reproduction and ultimately in fish stocks long-term.

  This work is important because the Canadian Arctic is warming at nearly three times the average global rate, and that affects species like Arctic char, which have an immense subsistence, and cultural and commercial value to the local community here.

  We use CHARS facilities to process the fish that we capture, to study their energy status over winter. We stay here at the triplexes and we store and maintain a lot of our equipment in the FMB or the field maintenance building. POLAR support makes our lives up here quite a bit easier.