Through the Climate Solutions Fund, I was able fly to Churchill, Manitoba for outreach with the local school and field sampling. It was during the sea-ice algae spring bloom, a time of high productivity crucial to local ecosystems. Churchill is a small subarctic community on Hudson Bay with polar bears, belugas, and the northern lights that can only be accessed by airplane or train. The Churchill port may rapidly expand by the 2030s and start shipping natural gas, lending urgency to questions about oil-eating microbes and algal responses to oil spills in Arctic waters. It is important we develop relationships with the community to learn about their concerns and expertise, continue experiments with input from local groups, and support students in this community by giving opportunities to participate in hands-on science demonstrations. The GENICE mesocosm project is addressing this need through large-scale

genomics and interdisciplinary approaches to set a baseline for how Arctic microbial communities and the sea ice itself responds to oil spills. We have two experimental pools at the Churchill Marine Observatory, where water was pumped into the pools directly from Hudson Bay, sealed from the bay, and sea ice formed naturally through exposure to air. We simulated a diesel spill in one pool in November and have been sampling about every month since then. Our dataset is so large it’s several terabytes of information. The GENICE research team has made consistent efforts to foster positive community collaborations and has contributed to numerous learning activities for youth and children of various ages. These efforts have helped researchers maintain positive relations with community members, but even more so have provided local youth with the opportunity to participate in scientific activities (both in field, laboratory, and classroom settings) they may not have had access to otherwise. This promotes a passion for science within students living in an extremely isolated Northern community and gives them the agency to feel empowered about field research happening in their own backyard.

Durell Desmond

To continue these collaborations, I visited the Duke of Marlborough School. I led a hands-on demonstration and spoke about the ocean conveyor belt. Students did a “salinity taste test” to see just how salty the ocean is, and how salinity is related to density and global ocean circulation. I connected this to climate change through the freshening of the North Atlantic and subsequent slowing of ocean circulation. Students spent time on an interactive map of global atmospheric and oceanic properties. They enjoyed finding Churchill on the map and exploring environmental parameters around Hudson Bay.

Lisa Oswald

I also helped with our ongoing sampling efforts, which entailed drilling ice cores and sampling the seawater beneath the ice. We had to wear hazmat suits and respirators in the diesel spill due to health hazards. Water was filtered for later DNA and RNA extractions, allowing investigation of microbial diversity and function in the diesel-infested water. We also collected samples out on the sea ice in Hudson Bay and traveled via snowmobile! However, we had to head back to town after spotting two polar bears out on the ice.

With the ongoing decline of Arctic sea ice due to climate change, northern shipping lanes are becoming more accessible later into the year and leading to an unprecedented surge in maritime shipping traffic within the Arctic Circle. Thus, there is an urgent need to understand marine oil spill threats in the Arctic for communities, government agencies, and industry leaders to mitigate risks and plan effective incident responses.

Written by Jordan Winter.  Jordan Winter is a fourth-year PhD student in Biological Oceanography. Her work focuses on using bioinformatic techniques to investigate microbial diversity and function in marine extremes. She is also a PCC GCeCS student.