Fieldwork in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut

In early August 2017, Kiyomi and I went to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, do collect some field data for her work on Satellite-Derived Bathymetry (SDB). It was the first time for us to travel to the Canadian Arctic, so pretty exciting for both of us! We stayed for free in a bright and roomy apartment associated with the brand new Canadian High Arctic Research Station (CHARS) run by Polar Knowledge Canada, which is an incredible facility for visiting researchers. Not only did Polar take care of our accommodations, they also helped us connect with others in the area, and even lent us two fatbikes to get around town. Thanks Polar!

Some of the SDB methods Kiyomi is exploring for her thesis research require very detailed measurements of the colour of the seafloor. In the image below, Kiyomi (black) is just above to head down to make such measurements, accompanied by Chris Arko (red) of the local dive club HARD-KOR. Thanks Chris! Photo credit goes to Angulalik Pedersen, who also assisted with getting Kiyomi and Chris into, and out of, their drysuits. Thanks Angut!

Other SDB methods require georeferenced data on water depth, which we had also come to Cambridge Bay to acquire. One of the great groups of people we encountered on our trip was the crew of the Martin Bergmann, a research vessel operated by the Arctic Research Foundation. They helped us immensely by lending us one of their little boats one morning, so we could putter around with an echosounder and a GPS to get that kind of data. The image below shows Kiyomi, hard at work looking at the surroundings, while the echosounder (under water, attached to the yellow stick) and the GPS (grey box) automatically log our position and the water depth every second.

With the essential data successfully acquired, there was even a bit of time for getting to know the local area better. Once again the kind people of Polar came to the rescue, offering us a ride and a hike on Mount Pelly, the one local mountain (an esker) in an otherwise very flat part of the world. It's a pretty different landscape from what we are used to!