This unique Arctic ecosystem is under threat from climate change. Inuit want to save it.
Inuit Circumpolar Council representantives meet with Nunavut, Greenland counterparts to discuss protection of Pikialasorsuaq polynya
Pikialasorsuaq is an 85,000-square-kilometre expanse of open water between Baffin Island and Greenland that is under threat from industrial development and climate change. (Image courtesy of Fisheries and Oceans Canada)
Inuit are moving to take a bigger role in managing a delicate High Arctic marine ecosystem that has supported people in the area for thousands of years.
The Pikialasorsuaq polynya is a vast expanse of year-round open water between Baffin Island and Greenland. It teems with narwhals, bowhead whales, walruses, migratory seabirds and an abundance of plankton that blooms each spring, attracting Atlantic cod that feed on it. Polar bears also hunt ringed and bearded seals along the polynya’s ice edge.
Climate change is opening easier access to the approximately 85,000-square-kilometre polynya, or stretch of open water surrounded by ice, which gets its name — Pikialasorsuaq — from the Greenlandic dialect of Kalaallisut. It translates to “the great upwelling.”
More ships and commercial fishing boats are moving through and the area is attracting more tourism activities, which pose a threat to wildlife. It’s also vulnerable to the impacts of resource exploration and seismic testing.
That’s why representatives from the Inuit Circumpolar Council and Qikiqtani Inuit Association met in Nuuk, Greenland, on Sept. 11 and 12 to discuss recommendations to Canada and Denmark about how Inuit can take the lead in managing Pikialasorsuaq.
One participant, Hilu Tagoona, said she left the meeting feeling optimism and hope for progress toward establishment of an Inuit-led management regime for the area.
“It was inspiring to be in a room full of Inuit from across Canada and Greenland discussing the future of this region together,” she said.
“Although we’ve been separated by state borders, we have so many connections and commonalities. This was clear during the meeting, as everyone shared knowledge and worked toward a unified vision for how this place should be managed.”
Tagoona is senior Arctic adviser with Oceans North, a charitable organization that supports science and community-based conservation in the Arctic and Atlantic regions of Canada.
She said there’s a “real opportunity” for Greenland and Canada to come together to protect what she described as one of the Arctic’s most biodiverse and productive ecosystems.
The health of Pikialasorsuaq, the largest of 23 polynya that exist across the circumpolar world, is critical for food security in its surrounding communities.
For millennia, the area has supported a way of life for Inuit and continues to today for those in adjacent communities including Arctic Bay, Grise Fiord, Pond Inlet, Clyde River and Resolute Bay on the Canadian side.
Inuit used the ice surrounding the polynya as a bridge to migrate between what’s now Baffin Island and Greenland.
This month’s meetings stem from a letter of intent, signed by Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans and its Greenlandic counterpart on Oct. 19, 2023, for co-operation on the issue.
But the initial conservation effort began in 2013, when Greenland hosted a workshop in Nuuk to raise concerns about the health of Pikialasorsuaq in the face of a melting Arctic.
A Pikialasorsuaq Commission was convened in 2016, led by a tribunal that included former Nunavut premier Eva Aariak and former Greenland premier Kuupik Kleist. They consulted with communities in the area of the polynya.
The commission released three recommendations in 2017: establish an Inuit-led management area on and around Pikialasorsuaq; further define the boundaries of the area; and ensure free mobility for Inuit across the borders of Canada and Greenland.
Lisa Qiluqqi Koperqualuk, vice-chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, said the spirit of the meeting proved that working together makes everybody stronger.
“The chance to collectively utilize our Inuit knowledge for stewarding a region that represents us as an Arctic people is too important to leave unaddressed,” she said.
“Our waters, coastal regions, and ice are critical to who we are as Inuit.”
Representatives from QIA did not return a request for an interview.
People need to realize the earth has a cycle, just look at the ice age. Its just more fear mongering by the liberals! Stop watching liberal funded mainstream media.
HOW DARE YOUU
How will it stop ? Earlier spring melts a real thung nowadays , nobody has a concrete plan to mitigate this. Realize it it is too late to try anything. Carbon tax isnt working only getting worse. Our weather patterns are going astray and not predictable anymore ,even the internet weather apps are wrong most times cause its changing before their forecasted weather reports . Ice was a foot thinner than an average winter. Heat domes causing tundra to dry up so much that now it burns . We inuit never caused this but the millions of cars and planes that encircle our ” TINY WORLD” our northern animals suffer in these hot heat dome summers we have nowadays . We need an ecological understanding how we are creating such an environmental disaster in our education system .There is no amount of money to fix it either. Cost are too tremendous just to think about it .
Our leaders think we can make a difference while ignoring the fact that the real problem is with developing and 3rd world countries, none of which care about their emissions.
I don’t understand the logic here, really. A polynya can only exist in the winter, since it’s an open area surrounded by ice, but when they’re talking about cruise ships and fishing vessels, they can only get there in the summer when there is no polynya and it’s no different than the resat of the ocean around it. They’re going on about something that doesn’t represent a threat.
The North Water Polynya (aka Pikialasorsuaq Polynya) apparently has been used by humans for thousands of years, and by wildlife virtually forever. Strong winds, strong currents, tides and and subsurface-surface convection contribute to the circumstances that cause this open water phenomenon in the heart of the high Arctic. There are polynyas in the Antarctic as well.
Earth is a dynamic body – geologically, physically and biologically. The effects of the galaxy, tectonic plate movement, volcanoes, and the atmosphere all interact in stable, yet dynamic ways to produce our climates and geological activities.
To date there is no EVIDENCE that humans affect those dynamics in any way, not withstanding claims to the contrary. Nonetheless, we do pollute and we do disturb Earth’s surface.
The only other anthropogenic effects are the ones that we have on society and those that society has on us. Do not be distracted by that of which you know very little; try to know more than just what you are told to know.
Yeah but it’s a great selling point for nonprofits with questionable motives like Oceans North to get massive amounts of research funding from the Feds and other agencies and look like allies by buying boats and gas for a few select indigenous communities so they can “protect” Pikialasorsuaq polynya.
It goes deeper than that.
So deep it’s the banking of the oceans around the world by MEGA and multi-national corporations for their full domination and control of the seas.
All laid out following sustainable development and with emotional fear of climate change. Announced with UN resolution 69-292 many years ago on earth day.
Look at it as grabbing areas of the sea to make them available only to a select few. While making absolute No-Go zones for everyone else.
Before the Inuit, groups celebrate. They better read the fine print before agreement to what is called an Ocean Grab.
Find out who really has the rights to exploration, development and financial gains of any hydrocarbons in the area?
Know who has the rights to special and even unknow things found in the waters, which may be used for pharmaceutical development now or in the future?
Who can harvest fish, sea life, minerals without Inuit or Canada have a say in the matter or financial gain?
But it’s with Canada, so all ok? No-Go Areas won’t apply to us.
Then better check if “indigenous” has a definition or left undefined for future definition as now happening in Canadian Parliament C-Bill and passed without challenge for definition.
Too late.
Way. Way…too late.
Build the mines in Nunavut. Open shipping routes as wildlife in Nunavut will decline more and I’d prefer a job over hunting. Never learned how and need my Micky D and KFC.🤘😂
Make him/her stop talking.
Trying to make us cugs think and read.
My head hurts.😯🤕