So, aside from the usual summer sampling at shark tournaments, tagging sharks and other field work, once in awhile my job takes me to some interesting places. Most recently it was up in the Arctic to study arctic lake trout. We were 2-300 km North of Cambridge Bay at a remote lake. Of course, the only way to get there is by float plane so we took this beautiful girl, a De Havilland Beaver. Built in 1958, she handled very well and was a blast to fly in!
that's me in the blue on the left
This was our campsite. the first part of the week was fantastic, with weather in the mid 20's
Occasionally we saw fresh arctic wolf tracks near our tents in the morning
The arctic has its beauty as well
Here's the real reason we were there, to sample some lakes for arctic lake trout. We're trying to age them and estimate the population numbers to prevent them from being overfished if the fishing in the north opens up in the future. This is a smaller one, my colleagues caught some twice this size the prior week.
our make shift lab for sampling
weighing and measuring a fish
cruising in the Zodiac
just to show how calm and beautiful it was for the first part of the trip
After sampling our first lake we moved on to our second lake and then the weather changed....
In the matter of a couple hours we had a huge blizzard that pretty much flattened our tents and winds in excess of 90 km/hr which were sustained for 3 days. We missed our window for getting out and had to hold up in these conditions until the weather calmed down enough to get another float plane in to pick us up. Thrilling and a bit scary to say the least!
that's me in the blue on the left
This was our campsite. the first part of the week was fantastic, with weather in the mid 20's
Occasionally we saw fresh arctic wolf tracks near our tents in the morning
The arctic has its beauty as well
Here's the real reason we were there, to sample some lakes for arctic lake trout. We're trying to age them and estimate the population numbers to prevent them from being overfished if the fishing in the north opens up in the future. This is a smaller one, my colleagues caught some twice this size the prior week.
our make shift lab for sampling
weighing and measuring a fish
cruising in the Zodiac
just to show how calm and beautiful it was for the first part of the trip
After sampling our first lake we moved on to our second lake and then the weather changed....
In the matter of a couple hours we had a huge blizzard that pretty much flattened our tents and winds in excess of 90 km/hr which were sustained for 3 days. We missed our window for getting out and had to hold up in these conditions until the weather calmed down enough to get another float plane in to pick us up. Thrilling and a bit scary to say the least!
