Adaptability

“Adaptability: a wise man adapts himself to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.” ~unknown

Seemingly out of nowhere, the temperatures rose to +10 degrees C here in Churchill on Sunday. A beautiful sunny day to head out onto Button Bay and the Churchill River Estuary to sample for some zooplankton under the ice. How do you do that? Well, first you have to make a hole in the ice big enough to fit the sampling net. We managed to do this by drilling four holes in the ice and then connecting them using chainsaw, chipper, hammer, shovel, feet, hands and anything else we could find. Thankfully, over the past few spring seasons we have had plenty of practice with the ice drill so we were fairly quick and efficient even though the freshwater ice in the estuary was giving us a bit of a hard time.

Once the holes are connected, sampling begins – drop the net down the hole, bring it up, filter all water and slush out, put contents into jar and repeat. We did this all day Sunday in the bright sunshine until the fog bank from the north rolled in, stealing the warmth and most of the visibility so we called it quits for the day.

Monday remained warm with temperatures reaching +20. Kat and LeeAnn weren’t in the office, so I capitalized on some of the nice weather and dwindling snow banks around the parking lot to do some “yard clean-up”…mainly putting away snowmachines and komatiks and hunting for the picnic tables (a sure sign that spring is here?).

More under ice zooplankton sampling was on order for Tuesday. Our Hudson Bay sampling sites were located north of the airport so we had to get a little creative on where to unload the snowmobiles. Add to that the fact that the temps didn’t even dip below zero on Monday night so there were a lot fewer snowbanks to choose from for unloading. Combined with +18 temperatures by mid morning, the sampling went smoothly out on the sea ice (practice makes perfect….), so we made our way back to the river for another round of freshwater sampling. Because of all the melting, there were plenty of pools of water on top of the river ice. The ride to the sampling location was a lot more like a Sea-Doo ride than a Ski-Doo ride! We struggled a bit again with connecting our sampling holes, but after a lot of cursing, and some trial and error and the PhD patience of FishB we were able to get the net down there and complete our work for the day. The ride back was apparently the most exciting part for Kat as we managed to bump into a small ice chunk and throw ourselves from the snowmobile about 50 yards from shore. Thankfully we didn’t fall into any of the pools and no real injuries were sustained.

A few pats on the back for all of us for our Research Technician Savvy! It seems that when the 3 of us get together to get some work done, the final result is some good data, some smiles and laughs and in some cases; epic face tans.

~Carley












PS. There have also been many birds sighted in the last few days as well. The first snow geese were seen on Friday (the 13th) with thousands arriving with the nice weather over the weekend. Several raptors have been spotted and many of the smaller shorebirds have also been seen flocking in for the nice weather.

The usual spring weather has returned though!



These are for Kuz... here are the Ramsay ITEX sites prior to Sunday's warm weather... we are keeping an eye on them and they are all snow free as of Tuesday!



Lastly, congratulations to Parks Canada on their Centennial Anniversary today!