Multilingual Arctic marine atlas offers abundant info, maps, images

“An essential contribution to a vibrant, Canadian Arctic”

By JANE GEORGE

This page on the loon from Canada's Marine Atlas shows the high quality of photos, along with other visual materials, contained inside.


This page on the loon from Canada’s Marine Atlas shows the high quality of photos, along with other visual materials, contained inside.

Here's the Inuinnaqtun cover of the new 122-page Canada's Marine Atlas, which is also available free, online, in English, French and Inukitut.


Here’s the Inuinnaqtun cover of the new 122-page Canada’s Marine Atlas, which is also available free, online, in English, French and Inukitut.

AFor an easy-to-read resource on just about anything you want to know about the Arctic environment, you can now consult Canada’s Arctic Marine Atlas.

The atlas was released earlier this week, so that it will end up in the hands of the G7 environment ministers, who are meeting from Wednesday to Friday this week in Halifax.

“Together with the continued involvement of Inuit in shaping their future on their terms, the information compiled here is an essential contribution to a vibrant, Canadian Arctic,” says the book’s introduction by Mary Simon, the honorary chair of Oceans North, which produced the atlas, along with the World Wildlife Fund and Ducks Unlimited.

In her introduction to the 122-page atlas, which includes detailed maps of Inuit place names and trails, Simon praised the atlas for “illustrating that Inuit Nunangat is the place of our people and all they do and know.”

That was an intended focus, Louie Porta, vice president of operations for Oceans North, told Nunatsiaq News.

And that’s why the atlas starts off with a look at humans and the environment, Porta said.

Inuit come “not last, but first in the atlas,” he said, although this is often not the case in other similar publications, which treat a facet of the Arctic environment separately from the people who live there.

The atlas takes a look at industrial development and conservation management efforts in Canada’s North, while its seven chapters survey species from the bottom of the food chain up through fish, birds and marine mammals.

The atlas includes 67 photos, 77 maps, 33 scientific illustrations and three food-web graphics.

Among the interesting tidbits of information in the atlas is a discussion of the differences between Arctic char and Dolly Varden trout.

Every section underlines issues of special importance to Inuit, and gaps in knowledge and conservation concerns, if any.

Porta said the reality described in the atlas may change but the information will be able to be updated, and the work will serve as a baseline.

One of the best features of this atlas is that everyone can look at it: you can download the atlas for free, and read it in either English, French, Inuinnaqtun and Inuktitut.

If you don’t have the bandwidth to do this, you will soon find printed copies in schools, libraries, hamlets and offices across the North.

The translation of the atlas, already a three-year project, took an extra six months, Porta said, but they wanted it to be accessible to everyone in the North.

The WWF’s Paul Crowley, head of Arctic conservation for WWF-Canada, said he hopes the atlas supports conservation efforts to protect the Arctic ecosystem.

“The Arctic is undergoing rapid change, attracting attention from nations and corporations eyeing its business potential,” Crowley said in a release on the atlas.

“We have an opportunity here to get it right, and that starts with understanding the marine environment through the eyes of the people who rely on it and the wildlife that make it home.”

The atlas is available on the following websites:

Oceans North

Ducks Unlimited Canada

World Wildlife Fund Canada

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