view . spring 2013
7
As far as great fish tales go, it wasn’t exactly the epic
struggle described
in
Moby Dick
or
The Old Man and The Sea
.
The Greenland shark secured belly-up to the port side of the
tiny Zodiac craft that bobbed up and down in the gelid waters of the
fjord-lined Scott Inlet was indeed a large one at more than two-and-
a-half metres in length. The fight it offered up, however, was less
than valorous.
Known for being lethargic, the giant
beast offered no resistance as we tried to
secure an accurate measurement of it.
Despite its insouciance, I still managed
to get the tape measure caught in its
razor-sharp teeth. The ensuing skirmish
to remove it seemed to amuse Dr. Nigel
Hussey, the scientist patiently waiting to
get on with the rest of his work.
“Well, that’s a first Steve,” he
commented drolly in his clipped English
accent as I continued to wage my tooth-
and-nail battle over the tape measure, eventually claiming victory
after disengaging a slightly masticated version of the original from
the jaws of the brute.
The shark was just one of 17 we caught during a seven-day trip
along the north shore of Baffin Island in Canada’s mid-Arctic. I was
aboard the 65-foot Government of Nunavut research vessel, MV
Nuliajuk, as part of a crew of scientists and commercial anglers
studying the elusive Greenland shark and turbot, also known as
Greenland halibut.
Hussey, a post-doctoral research fellow in the University’s Great
Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, works in the lab of
professor Aaron Fisk. A trophic ecologist, Dr. Fisk is responsible for
the Arctic portion of the Ocean Tracking Network, a $168-million
initiative to track the migratory patterns of a wide variety of aquatic
species around the planet.
Fisk and Hussey both work with the federal Department of
Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), which is gathering the data it requires
to establish new commercial fisheries in northern Inuit communities
like Clyde River, the tiny Baffin Island village from which we set sail
in mid-September.
“The Inuit have special rights to their land and the animals
that live there,” said Fisk. “We really want to contribute to them
developing a viable fishery, which I think is critical for northern
development.”
Inuit anglers fish regularly for such commercially important
species as the bottom-dwelling turbot, but Greenland sharks often
get caught in the hooks that dangle from the long lines they spread
out on the ocean floor. Last year a fisherman from Newfoundland
was charged for allegedly cutting off the fins of a Greenland shark
caught in his hooks.
Scientists like Fisk and Hussey, as
well as DFO scientist Kevin Hedges—
who was on board the Nuliajuk with
us—want to better understand the
movements of both species in order to
help anglers fish more efficiently, while
preserving the numbers of Greenland
sharks, of which very little scientific
information is known.
Using a method called telemetry, the
researchers moor acoustic receivers to
the ocean floor, spacing them out about
a kilometre apart to form an acoustic
“gate.” They surgically implant acoustic tags tuned to the frequency
of those receivers into the turbot and sharks that they catch, to
establish a record of each time one of the fish passes through.
My role in the expedition was to tag along as a working member
of the crew, performing the grunt work required of a typical citizen
scientist, blogging about my experiences for the University’s
Daily
News
website, and providing regular updates via satellite phone to
CBC Windsor’s
The Early Shift
.
I jumped on the opportunity to assist with the Greenland shark
caught in one of our long lines and then observed, intrigued, as
Hussey performed high-seas surgery to implant the acoustic tag, as
well as collect a snippet of tissue for genetic sampling.
During this, my mind flashed back to the Inuit people whom
I’d met back in Clyde River, where we spent two days waiting
for the ship to arrive. Such problems as suicide and substance
abuse that commonly plague northern communities had been the
subject of ongoing media scrutiny when I left Windsor. I couldn’t
help but wonder if the research we were doing would lead to the
development of fisheries in the north, bringing new jobs and a level
of prosperity that could be part of the solution to those problems.
I hope so.
n
v
Stephen Fields BA ’88 is a communications officer who promotes research
at the University of Windsor. You can read all of his blogs and view the
video from the ship at uwindsor.ca/pac/blog.
FIELDS OF VIEW
The inside story of an Arctic adventure
“WE REALLY WANT TO
CONTRIBUTE TO THEM [THE
INUIT] DEVELOPING A VIABLE
FISHERY, WHICH I THINK IS
CRITICAL FOR NORTHERN
DEVELOPMENT.”
AARON FISK
RESEARCH
BY STEPHEN FIELDS
