Les Harris: Arctic char migrations and habitats

Les Harris, a fisheries biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, discusses his research on Arctic char migrations and habitats near Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.

• Transcript

  My name is Les Harris. I'm an Arctic research fisheries biologist currently based out of Winnipeg and I'm with Fisheries and Oceans Canada up in Cambridge Bay studying Arctic char.

  We specifically look at Arctic char and we're looking at a lot of different questions, but right now we're really focusing on sort of the spatial temporal aspects of char migrations, so the habitats they use

  We're doing the research through a long term acoustic telemetry program. Since 2013, we've tagged upwards of 500 Arctic chars and we've been tracking them throughout the marine and freshwater environments with over 100 stations in the Cambridge Bay area.

  We've actually learned quite a bit about char migrations and habitat use. We have identified areas that have importance, including some estuary habitats in the region. We know the specific areas of the water column that they like to inhabit and we really know a lot about the timing of the migrations between freshwater and saltwater.

  Our work is important for several reasons. First, we've kind of identified areas that we consider of critical importance for Arctic char to survive throughout their lifetime. These areas potentially down the road could be protected from things such as resource development and extraction.

  We've also learned a lot about the time of migrations and how this might change under future climate conditions. So as waters continue to warm and rivers break at different times where the ocean stays open longer, that can impact when char want to migrate between the habitats they use, so the ocean, for example, and the freshwater lakes that they spawn in in overwinter.

  CHARS provides accommodations for our research team, which is a hot commodity in the Arctic right now. We also used the field maintenance space to store our gear, which is critical. We don't have to ship it down every year. They do have aquatic laboratories that allow us to process a lot of our samples and do fish dissections.