“It’s a one-of-a-kind facility that’s going to be extremely useful to understand the impacts of climate change,” said David Barber, a professor and Canada Research Chair in Arctic-system Science who headed the CMO. “The shipping lanes have never really been open for human use and now they’re opening up. Though we’re not used to thinking of it that way, the Arctic gives Canada access to a third ocean.”

Feiyue Wang, professor of environment and geography at CEOS and OSIM chief scientist at CMO

Feiyue Wang, a professor and Canada Research Chair in Arctic Environmental Chemistry at the Centre for Earth Observation Science (CEOS) in the Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources, is the chief scientist in charge of the OSIM pools.

“The shipping lanes have never really been open for human use and now they’re opening up. Though we’re not used to thinking of it that way, the Arctic gives Canada access to a third ocean.”

“I’m a chemist, so I think of this as a bigger beaker,” Wang jokes. His research has focused on legacy contaminants such as mercury and now emerging contaminants like oil spills and microplastics.

More seriously, Wang describes the windows built into the pools as an education opportunity that will allow students and community members to watch processes like how oil freezes in ice.

“The main thing is these youth are the future of Arctic research. Scientists, researchers and leaders will come out of these youth. We want them to take the next step and be a researcher in their own homeland, connected to science and technology, and linked with traditional knowledge.”

The outreach includes Frontier School Division students who are welcomed to shadow CMO researchers or work on science fair projects.

“We tend to think we’re a prairie province or a Canadian shield province, but we’re a coastal province. People fly to Florida to see the ocean, and I always wonder, why not fly to Churchill instead?” says Wang.

As the largest facility at the University of Manitoba, the CMO is opening with high expectations, given the impact of climate change, the risk of spills from a fuel delivery to Arctic communities and increased ship traffic in general. There’s also oil exploration and drilling in the Russian Arctic, as well as U.S. interest in Arctic oil.

“In the early days, we were a small group and we wouldn’t have been able to get the funding for the CMO, But over time we got bigger and better, and we were able to compete for funding.”

“Regardless of whether Canada continues to extend our moratorium on oil exploration and drilling in Arctic marine waters, should there be a spill in international waters, the oil knows no boundary and could still end up in Canadian waters, for example, the 2020 Norilsk oil spill in Russia,” says Gary Stern, board co-chair of the CMO and lead of the GENICE project. With a background in contaminant research, he studies to what extent native bacteria present in Arctic marine waters could naturally respond and biodegrade the spilled oil. The research ties into how remote communities might be prepared to be the first responders to an oil spill—or know when to stand back—when a spill occurs near them.

Gary Stern, board co-chair of the CMO and adjunct professor of environment and geography at CEOS and lead on the GENICE project

“For people who live in the Artic, this is important for them. They’re the first responder to oil spills and it’s important for them to understand how to respond,” says Stern. It’s another facet of the community relations that CMO researchers have built over time.

Designed to work with industry partners, the CMO has collaborated with organizations such as Manitoba Hydro, Environment Canada, NASA and other space agencies. On the academic side, the facility gives the opportunity to collaborate with researchers at international institutions like University of Copenhagen and Aarhus University in Denmark, and University College London, along with domestic universities both large and small, ranging from the University of Calgary to the University of Quebec at Rimouski. Undergraduate students from UM in engineering, chemistry, geography and social science may find jobs at the facility this summer.

All those scientists visiting Churchill represent a boon to the region’s economic development. Barber noted Churchill’s long-time mayor has been lobbying for a facility similar to the CMO for almost 20 years: “He sees science as an economic pillar of the community.” If the CMO has been a long time in coming, it echoes how UM has built its research strengths in the Arctic. “In the early days, we were a small group and we wouldn’t have been able to get the funding for the CMO,” said Barber. “But over time we got bigger and better, and we were able to compete for funding.” The result of those years of efforts is now coming to fruition.

Research Vessel William Kennedy.

Oceanographic Research

CJ Mundy, professor of environment and geography at CEOS and EO chief scientist at CMO

Operated along with the Arctic Research Foundation, the R/V William Kennedy has a shallow draft that allows it to sail near the shores of coastal communities where large icebreakers can’t reach.

“We’ve been able to sample shallow coastal areas that we wouldn’t be able to typically access with a larger vessel like the CCGS Amundsen,” says CJ Mundy, chief scientist in charge of the CMO-EO. “It opens up research in the coastal Arctic, like Hudson Strait, Hudson Bay, Foxe Basin and James Bay.”

One annual task for the ship is to visit the two environmental observation buoys that are moored to iron train wheels in the centre of Hudson’s Bay. The visit lets researchers download data collected over the past 12 months on oceanographic factors like salinity and temperature. “Each sensor has its own data and battery pack. You hope the sensor doesn’t leak—or the battery fail,” says Mundy, an associate professor in the department of environment and geography whose research includes algae, phytoplankton and kelp. “Sometimes it’s perfect, but the risk of sensor failure cannot be avoided. I always feel nervous when deploying and retrieving the sensors every year.” The batteries are designed to last for 24 months, in case a winter of thick ice means the ship can’t make the trip in August.

“When I’m talking to my friends, they’re surprised we have a marine observatory in Manitoba,” says Mundy. “We’re the single largest international group that focuses on sea ice, for many good reasons. One of them is the fact that Manitoba has ocean-front property on the Arctic Ocean.”

Visit the Churchill Marine Observatory on our website.

Take a virtual tour aboard the research vessel William Kennedy.

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Research leader

An excerpt from a conversation with Dr. Digvir Jayas

I am in the first year of my Masters program in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Manitoba. My research is focused on zoo archaeological investigations of Southampton Island, in which I will be analyzing animal remains that have been excavated from archaeological sites located at and around Native Point in the southeastern region of the island. As the material for my project had already been collected in the 1950s and 1970s, I knew the majority of my research would take place in a lab. When an opportunity arose to lend a hand with sampling on this expedition with Associate Professor CJ Mundy and his team from the Centre for Earth Observation Science, I jumped at the chance. I knew that I would be out of my element, but I also knew that this would be a once in a lifetime experience to be on board an arctic research vessel. With an urge to get my hands dirty once again, I embraced the opportunity for a different kind of field season.

Very different.

Let me stress that I love nature, but my line of work leaves me handling animals that have been dead for thousands of years. So when one of our science nets came back with our first live sample, I was giddy with excitement. Up close we got to see what was hiding in the dark waters below, which included sculpin fish, shrimp, sea cucumbers, and crabs, to name a few. My favorite friend from the sea has to be the lumpsucker. Have you ever seen such a friendly looking fish?

A lumpsucker fish caught by an exploratory trawl in the waters off of Southampton Island, Nunavut. Photo credits: T.Surian

Fortunately, not all of the wildlife was hiding below the waves. Although we haven’t caught sight of a narwhal, which I was really looking forward to, we did get to view countless walrus basking on Walrus Island. A few of us were even treated to the sight of a polar bear being chased away from town by a couple of locals at five o’clock in the morning, back dropped by a brilliant bright orange sunrise.

 Another great perk about this project is being able to make connections between our research and the local community. David, our Inuk observer, joined us from Coral Harbour and shared with us knowledge about his community and the surrounding regions. This provided a great opportunity to learn about what local Inuit are currently hunting, how they process their food, and what they prefer to eat. With a big smile on his face, David told me that beluga was his favorite, and during a recent trip to shore we met with Inuit hunters who were hauling in a walrus from the day’s hunt. I’m eager to relate these experiences with my own archaeological analysis of the region.

Since my research began in January of this year, I’ve spent a lot of my time thinking about the past and considering the relationships that past inhabitants of this island had with animals hundreds and even thousands of years ago. I feel fortunate to be given the opportunity to connect that past with the present. Although I have yet to begin the analysis stage of my research, I am already able to see how my work will fit into the greater scheme of this project. As a varied group of scientists, including biologists, oceanographers, geomorphologists – and one slightly out of place archaeologist – our research reaches around the island, to the ocean floor below it, to its recent and distant past, and, perhaps most importantly, to the communities that it will impact most. It has been an incredible experience to be a part of this expedition and to be able to contribute to it in my own way, whether that’s sharing my research with other scientists on board or simply sorting lumpsuckers from sculpins.

Jasmine Liesch is a Masters student affiliated with the Centre of Earth Observation Science (CEOS) at the University of Manitoba. Her current research involves investigating subsistence patterns of Palaeo-Inuit and Neo-Inuit hunter gatherers on Southampton Island, Nunavut. Her work is funded by Marine Environmental Observation Prediction and Response Network (MEOPAR) and POLAR Canada.

We are an eclectic team of 20 science and ship crew aboard the research vessel William Kennedy collecting oceanographic data to improve our understanding of how the marine ecosystem surrounding the island currently functions and how it will respond to our warming climate.

Everyday our team breaks new ground from observations of ocean structure along transects never before sampled to delineating local shallow and deeper water extents of algae, shrimp, and fish found on the ocean floor.

The information collected will help us paint a picture of the local marine ecosystem to support fisheries and marine wildlife management decisions for local community, territorial, and national governing bodies in the region. This is a critical step forward in the face of a rapidly changing climate that is not only influencing the marine environment, but is garnering an ever-increasing industrial presence that will add new pressures on the sensitive Arctic ecosystem.

When organizing a research expedition in the Canadian Arctic, you need to plan as much as possible for the inevitable challenges that will be faced in a remote setting, whether it is re-fuelling a ship, keeping expensive science gear up and running, or hiding and waiting out a storm. Of course, we always add additional days of ship time in our plans to account for storms; however, you can only plan so much. When things do go wrong that you didn’t plan for, you need to keep a level head and make the best out of the situation. I like to call these learning experiences.

With this being the William Kennedy’s first voyage to the Arctic, we have experienced our fair share of learning experiences. One particular event that occurred was the loss of our SCUBA air compressor due to a faulty factory installation, something completely out of our control. Attempts were made to fix the compressor, but the stars did not align and thus our SCUBA-diving benthic (ocean floor) ecologists aboard had to figure out a different sampling plan. Their goal was to map out species distributions of benthic algae (kelp and other seaweeds) in a region that has no prior observations, yet we hypothesized that benthic algae would play a key role in the local marine ecosystem. 

The learning experience for future SCUBA diving is to have a back-up compressor on board, but all was not lost for our current scientific expedition. The benthic ecologists were able to develop a camera system to view the ocean floor, while collecting species inventory samples from our scientific fishing trawl activities onboard. As a result, we are discovering that benthic algae have an extensive distribution around the southern portion of Southampton Island, supporting our original hypothesis and helping us plan for future expeditions in the region.

Looking forward, we have two and a half days left of data collection, ending with a community visit in the town of Coral Harbour, whose population is just over 800 people living on the southern shore of Southampton Island. I can say that our science voyage has been an incredible success with new discoveries, learning experiences, and collaborations.

The William Kennedy is a special ship, she is very stable in high seas (I experienced first-hand 4 m seas on this cruise), has an incredible crew and infrastructure to support scientific operations in both deep and near-shore shallow seas, a large research laboratory, and a perfect size to support a critical mass of scientists to carry out complex and collaborative research without feeling crowded.

As a scientist who has been on many large and small research vessels in the Arctic over the last 22 years, I strongly feel the William Kennedy fills an important infrastructure gap that was needed for the Hudson Bay region at a critical point in time. I am excited about future research possibilities aboard the William Kennedy in the years to come.

Dr. C.J. Mundy is an Associate Professor in Biological Oceanography at the Centre for Earth Observation Science, Department of Environment and Geography, University of Manitoba. He is principal investigator of the Southampton Island Marine Ecosystem Project, a project supported by a grant from the MEOPAR Network of Centre of Excellence, the Churchill Marine Observatory (CMO), as well as individual grants to project team members from the University of Manitoba, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, University of New Brunswick, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Scottish Association For Marine Science, and Université Laval. Dr. Mundy is also chief scientist for the CMO-Environmental Observatory, which includes the William Kennedy, operated under a collaboration between the University of Manitoba and Arctic Research Foundation and funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Province of Manitoba, and Western Economic Diversification Canada.