Feels like fall is upon us...

Well the last few days have brought temperatures just scraping into the double digits as well as wind gusts up to 70km/h. Myself, Emily and Liz spent most of the day yesterday on the bluffs collecting some Daphnia for one of my committee members at the University of Oklahoma. While these Daphnia have no idea, they are about to embark on a plane ride to Winnipeg and then Guelph before being rushed across the border by FedEx. They also have no idea that it can take an entire morning just organizing a shipment of water samples with the FDA! While out on the bluffs yesterday we noted that seaspray from the waves was reaching a good 200m inland. Two grain ships are anchored in the bay waiting to enter the port and I definitely would not have wanted to be at sea with yesterday's wind! According to the Manitoba Goverment, grain shipments comprise 90% of activity at the port!

With 2 weeks left in the field season I am busy getting sampling and experiments wrapped up and logistics sorted out for the trip back to Ontario. August is flying by but I've had several opportunities to take a break from my work and do some other things around the CNSC.

Showing my mom around the bluffs (my parents visited for a week and were put to work).

Showing some zooplankton to kids from the summer rec program in town (photo cred: the talented Leah Olivier).

Helping Krista and Leah haul palettes in the fen. Krista is building a boardwalk out to her flux station to reduce the environmental impact of accessing the station everyday. Thanks to Krista for this photo.

The transition going on out on the tundra is really noticeable right now, the colours are different and the air has a different feel to it. Well back to some data analysis and R...another part of wrapping up a field season, getting ready to actually use the data you have spent months collecting!

My time in Churchill

One month in Churchill. What can I say? It was a wonderful experience and I’m very thankful that I had this opportunity. I was able to do almost everything I wanted, which is surprising since we seemed to work all the time. I can’t believe I was actually there for a whole month. The time passed very quickly. I don’t know if that’s because we were so busy or that time seems to keep going faster as I get older. Getting up at 7am was difficult for me, and Amanda had to wake me up a few times. After we packed up all the equipment we’d go out sampling for the morning, come back for lunch and then go sampling again in the afternoon. Sometimes we packed lunch which wasn’t so bad once people started bringing some good stuff to share. Our work area quickly became very cluttered as my experiments got under way and Amanda continued hers.


I came down with a cold halfway through my stay which wasn’t much fun. It was during that time that I really missed being at home. Another thing I found different was being cut off from my friends. You can’t just pick up the phone and call someone. The only person I was able to talk to was my mother and even then you can’t say everything you want to because there are always people standing around you. I also really missed having my dog around, and it was really nice when Silver would come around or we got to play with Leah’s dogs. She’s a pretty cool girl, and I’m glad I got a chance to get to know her. She sent me off with half a homemade loaf of bread and butter, and two sandwiches for my train ride back to Winnipeg. It’s basically the best bread ever so I was very happy to get it.

My last day in Churchill was definitely one of my best. The wind had picked up the day before and the Bay was looking pretty angry. Unfortunately we weren’t able to sample due to the wind, but we had a fun morning exploring Miss Piggy and watching the waves crash on the beach. After Leah and I dropped Amanda off in town we went out to the front of bluff D to check out the waves there. It was pretty crazy. We were getting splashed way up on the rocks and covered in a salty mist. There were even bubbles flying off the rocks. Then we went for toasted bread and butter at Leah’s house, followed by some excellent tea. It’s always neat to run into people who love something as much as you do...mmm tea. Leah showed me a cool website where I can order loose leaf tea. In the afternoon we took down my last LC50 experiment, using the car to block the wind, and then I finished packing up my stuff and got ready to leave. Unfortunately I forgot my water bottle at the centre so I’m going to have to use some crummy one for the next couple of weeks. Amanda’s parents took us for a very nice dinner in town before my train departed. I had Arctic Char for the first time, which was very good. It was nice to have a full meal before my train left.

My train is pretty busy, I’m currently on it, although I did manage to get two seats to myself. Some woman decided she’d start having a conversation at 6am this morning. Thankfully she got off about an hour later and I was able to get back to sleep. I really miss being in Churchill already. It’s so beautiful there. I’m glad I was able to just chill on the shores of Hudson Bay before I left. Every time I’m on my way back from camping, I just like to sit on the dock, look out over the water, and breathe in the fresh air. The air was so nice in Churchill. One thing I missed was the smell of the forest. I went into the fen with Krista a couple times on her ATV. You drive through a bit of forest on the way there, and it smelled so nice. Other than that Churchill has everything, amazing wildlife, the Bay, and the Northern Lights, which I was thankfully able to see during my last week. It was a beautiful display, like colourful curtains of fog swirling overhead of me. One other cool thing I got to do while I was here was go canoeing with the Beluga’s at sunset. They were swimming all around our boat calling to one another. Even though I froze for a couple hours it was a wonderful experience.


I’d much rather be out sampling right now than stuck on this train, which is currently stopped again. I think the following picture truly sums up our field team and this summer...

Wind much?

It is always cool to see something you haven't seen before. But it is especially cool when this thing happens to correspond with your science. In a paper by Weider et al. (2009), "Long-term changes in metapopulation structure: a quarter-century retrospective study on low-Arctic rock pool Daphnia", increasing salinity on the Churchill rock bluffs is discussed. In relation to that I had heard, many times, about a storm in 2006 that inundated the bluff pools with saline seawater at high tide.

Well we didn't have a storm quite like that but with wind from the north gusting up to 80 km/h, we came a little bit closer.

Below is a picture of the sea spray on bluff D from one of the windiest and most turbulent days on the bay from last year:

Pretty impressive right? You can probably just picture the zooplankton dispersing and the saltiness of the pools increasing!

Ok, but now check out the surf from Aug.5, 2010 (thanks to Leah for these pictures!):

Just another WOW moment in science!

In other news, we finally took that rusty barrell out of one of the ponds on bluff D!

Two events

Our field season has become increasingly busy over the last few weeks but I wanted to take some time to talk a little about two events we have had here in the last 10 days.

EVENT 1: Research in Action Tour

Each year the CNSC staff organize a community bus tour of the research based out of the CNSC. The bus picks community members and visitors to the Churchill area up from town and brings them to several research sites before ending the tour at the centre itself. This lets people from outside the CNSC see what researchers are up too and ask questions about how the Churchill landscape is affected by research. It also gives researchers a chance to improve their communication skills and see what eachother are up to as well (because believe it or not with everyone running around trying to get their stuff done, it is possible to go almost an entire field season and not know what every project entails). This year we heard about zooplankton, semipalmated plovers, aquatic insects, mites and the effect of snow cover on shrub encroachment. We had great weather and an awesome turn out! My site was the first on the tour and it was great to be waiting there and all of a sudden have 2 buses and a convoy of vehicles show up!

EVENT 2: 2nd Annual CNSC Science Olymp-a-thon

The Olymp-a-thon is a way to get everyone together for some science type fun and a bit of healthy competition. Using a random number generator, the researchers were split into teams of 4 and competed in a mascot competition using stuff from our "free for all" shelf, a find the hidden chick contest using pictures from the field (thanks JR and Francois) and a chest wader relay, followed by some casual horseshoes and a bonfire.

As you can see the competition gets pretty intense...

During our bonfire that night, we were treated to the magnificent aurora borealis, reminding us all why scientists first came to Churchill in the first place (well one of the reasons)!


Thanks to Leeanne Dunne and Andy Jonhson for the pictures this time around.

The way things go...

With the Research in Action tour happening in a few days I have been thinking about what I would like to tell community members and visitors about my study sites and project. While I will most likely explain my question, talk about the uniqueness of the bluffs and show them some fun swimming zooplankton, there is actually much more that I would love to say.

For instance, I would love to share one of the reasons that I love science and field ecology in particular...and that is that there is always something new to think about or improvise. Even when you think you have found an answer, a new question or challenge will pop up (and I say this in the most optimistic way possible).

This year we are collecting data for an undergraduate project focusing on phytoplankton communities and co-occurrence with zooplankton on the rock bluffs. I think that this is an important part of the ecosystem that we have yet to touch on during our studies in Churchill, and after reading several papers on functional traits of phytoplankton and how these can impact multiple trophic levels I was determined to collect data for this project.

Enter problem 1 and 2: how do you collect something that you often can't see with the naked eye (but that should be everywhere) and secondly, how do you go about identifying said organisms.

Well, the identification is a work in progress but we now have the study up and running on 5 different bluffs using 2 collection methods. One involves a simple bucket and plankton net method, capturing and concentrating the phytoplankton in much the same manner as we collect zooplankton.

The 2nd method involved a bit more improv and some outside advice. After studying an apparatus used by another research group to study algae colonization, we contructed and deployed several film traps, basically floating traps with secured plastic film designed to have phytoplankton accumulate on it.

We have had a few friends come out with us to the bluffs recently (most likely because of our propensity for seeing polar bears...7 today alone), and several have taken some great pictures of the phytoplankton project so I will post those soon.

Until then, here is myself and Kuz sorting some zooplankton.

Brittany has been here for a week now and will add a blog on her first impressions shortly! Tomorrow is Parks Day and we will venturing across the Churchill R to see the Prince of Wales Fort. Expect a post on that, the Research in Action Tour and the upcoming CNSC Olymp-a-thon shortly!

Serious science (sort of)

I've become convinced that a field season is about more than just your own research project. One of the many things that I love about the CNSC is the chance to experience other types of science. Not only is this an amazing learning experience but it really opens your eyes up to happenings in the scientific world...something undoubtedly important for any young grad student. Last week I had the opportunity to learn more about the world of ornithology, when I ventured into the field with my friend Anne, a fellow researcher from Trent University. Anne studies semipalmated plovers and killdeers. She is interested in how climate change may affect plovers as killdeer move north and overlap the plovers' range.

Watch out birders, I have now banded 3 birds! It has been really interesting to learn more about this study...with my research I am very focused on community level ecology and on abiotic processes as well to a certain extent. To learn more about how science is done at the population and behaviour level has been really neat.

Being in Churchill also provides you with some unique recreational opportunities. On Canada Day, several researchers braved the cold waters of Hudson Bay to participate in the annual Bay Dip, a relay race into Hudson Bay.

We are preparing for the CNSC's annual "Research in Action" tour so expect an update on that in the next few weeks!

In other news, Brittany has now arrived and will post a blog soon on her first impressions of Churchill and polar bears (yep they have arrived)!

A note to add about the microcosms

I thought I should add to my post about the hatching experiment...I'd like to thank Leah, the CNSC's summer high school student for extracting and transplanting almost 500 resting ephippia in one morning! This was not an easy task since ephippia, once dried and rehydrated become hydrophobic, making it difficult to get them back into an aquatic habitat!