Nunavut Wildlife Management Board

Common Fishes of Nunavut is a great field guide to learn all about fish species found across Nunavut. Comment below if you’d like a chance to win a copy of Common Fishes of Nunavut and a poster to go with it. We’ll randomly select three winners two days from now. We will contact all winners directly to ask for your mailing address.

The Nunavut Marine Council finalized its 5-year strategic plan in 2018. The NMC’s first goal from the strategic plan is to establish the NMC as a key voice on marine shipping. Shipping is expected to continue to increase in the Arctic due to a combination of environmental, economic, and political factors. The Nunavut Marine Council will seek to give advice to government agencies to help minimize the impacts of increased shipping on Arctic wildlife and Nunavummiut. Recent advice on shipping has included a letter to the Ministers of Transport and Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard on a heavy fuel oil ban in Arctic waters. You can find the Nunavut Marine Council’s Strategic Plan at https://buff.ly/3hWatbN

Here are the answers to your marine mammal skin guessing game! If you guessed qairulik/harp seal, qilalugaq/beluga, arvik/bowhead whale, aarluk/orca, aiviq/walrus, nattiq/ringed seal, you were right!

Can you guess whose skin this is? Here’s a hint: Only two of them are seals!

A study by researchers from the University of Ottawa on shipping trends in Tallurutiup Imanga (Lancaster Sound) found that shipping increased dramatically in the region between 1990 and 2018. The study found that the total distance travelled by all vessel types nearly tripled between 1990 and 2018, with a steep increase between 2009 and 2014. The study also found that pleasure crafts and passenger ships were considerably more concentrated on routes to communities in the region as well as on Beechy Island near the southwestern part of Devon Island. Link: https://buff.ly/3bQllZn

Microplastics are tiny particles of plastic that result from the breakdown of larger plastic items in the environment. These tiny plastic particles can be found in lakes and oceans, including in Nunavut. A recent study in Hudson Bay and Baffin Bay found that microplastics were present in 90% of surface water samples and 85% of sediment samples. Most of the microplastics found in these areas were likely from long-range transportation from other parts of the world through the ocean’s and atmosphere’s currents. The overall impacts of microplastics on Nunavut’s environment is still not well known. Link: https://buff.ly/3oYxWgU