| Summary: | The marine baseline study project in Chesterfield Inlet and Wager Bay in Ukkusiksalik National Park (UNP) was a one year, multi-disciplinary research project designed as a first assessment of important aspects of the marine environment. This project, initiated and funded by Parks Canada Agency and Government of Nunavut’s Department of Environment Fisheries and Sealing Division, was a collaboration between government and the Universities of Manitoba, Québec à Rimouski, and Memorial University of Newfoundland. The project provided a unique opportunity to investigate two acutely understudied coastal sub-arctic inlets, each currently experiencing very different levels of human and industrial activity. Simultaneously, the Hudson Bay region is facing environmental changes from ongoing climate change (Dery, 2005; Ferguson et al., 2005; Gagnon and Gough, 2005) In Chesterfield Inlet, shipping has increased in recent years due to mining activities inland. The community of Chesterfield have voiced their concerns about impacts of ship traffic on the marine environment near the community. This project attempted to address some of these concerns by increasing knowledge of the benthic community and supporting habitats, including the overlying water column and seafloor, against which future assessment of biodiversity and potential stressors, such as ship traffic and climate change can be evaluated. The study also aimed to investigate, using the recent sedimentary record (~last 100 years), the concentration of contaminants including hydrocarbons, metals, and total mercury as a first step towards establishing a baseline against which future changes could be assessed. In contrast, shipping and human activity has been relatively non-existent in Wager Bay (UNP). However, there are concerns of possible future increases in tourism and mining operations based outside of the park that could increase ship traffic through the Bay. In addition to these concerns, Wager Bay is an extremely understudied, large, complex, and uncharted Bay, ...
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