Salt Spring Island Archives

208_Bob-Howe_Arctic-Expeditions.mp3

otter.ai

30.03.2023

no

Unknown Speaker 0:00
I just wanted to thank you very much for inviting me. today. I'm very pleased to introduce my wife in the back how she's here today. And our son is here, Christopher, how he's going to be operating objective for us today. We also have a 16 year old daughter, so she's in grade 11. Yes, we've been living on the island for about 15 years. And we hope to remain

Unknown Speaker 0:40
I brought many artifacts and books with me today. Up here at the front you'll see the artifacts, bill included muskox bones this a series of femur stocks as well as the lower leg this, this here is sedimentary rock that has sediments embedded in.

Unknown Speaker 1:20
So I also have a couple more here, the same thing with the muscles embedded in the sedimentary rock as well. So what tropical there at one time. These were found in various places, fairly common theories, here's an impression of a fern, on this particular rock. So you can get the impression yes to work on crocodiles, and alligators, ferns and turtles, all that sort of thing. Quite close.

Unknown Speaker 1:59
So I also have an advert here about Harry caribou

Unknown Speaker 2:04
that I brought with me, the light is still on steady state last summer. Next summer. So after or during if you want to come up with certain

Unknown Speaker 2:24
different artifacts. So the books that I have up here, deal with Arctic history,

Unknown Speaker 2:34
especially European exploration periods. These books right here on the front table. I have books here on natural Arctic natural history, which I'll be discussing today. And so those are parts of history. Books will be including information on plants, animals, climate, atmosphere, terrain, geology, ice, birds, mammals, fish, and insects. And I'll have some information up here on global warming and climate change.

Unknown Speaker 3:14
When I was up in the Arctic last summer, for about a month, with Japanese scientists who are studying a warming.

Unknown Speaker 3:23
So I got quite interested in a lot of information. So I'll talk a little bit about that today as well.

Unknown Speaker 3:36
So those are sort of the range of subjects I'm planning to cover today. If you would like to contact me after that's fine.

Unknown Speaker 3:47
It's quite easy to all of us. And I plan to speak for today for about 45 minutes to an hour roughly. And then I'm planning to allow maybe 10 to 15 minutes at the very end for questions that you might have, as well. So during this presentation, what I plan to briefly cover is the four expeditions that I've taken up to the hierarchy over the last 45 years, and I plan to discuss that market natural history. Talk a little bit about the Arctic history per se. Primarily the European explorers, which I'm absolutely fascinated with this. My wife goes through

Unknown Speaker 4:38
piles and piles of books about explorers adventures. I also talk at near the end of that climate change.

Unknown Speaker 4:52
So first I would like to show of hands, how many people in the room have gone I would say north of the hour Big circle one actually let's get 123455 people that I would love to talk to you after and find a ways in what you've done. I'm sure you have stories as well. So fives and I counted about 5051 52 people today that sort of representation actually have the opportunity to go up there so I was very fortunate I've been very fortunate

Unknown Speaker 5:41
so I'd also like most people, when they think of a North Pole I would think that most people have very cold place a lot of snow windswept, very desolate place, very, very kind of so with that I'm gonna put on my first slide

Unknown Speaker 6:17
is probably a pretty much like this, I would say

Unknown Speaker 6:26
yeah, this is probably what you what you would expect. And this is this is a shot of Zoomer poll area. So I'm one of the things I'm planning to do is hopefully change our impression of the payment hierarchy. So, but first, I want to briefly describe the four expeditions that I've enjoyed to the Canadian High Arctic.

Unknown Speaker 6:58
So that's obviously the map of Canada and a little point more or less, I don't want to stand in anybody's way I'll be moving around.

Unknown Speaker 7:18
So I'll just keep moving. So obviously, we all should know where we are now. And the areas I'm going to describe in this obviously the Western Arctic, and the eastern Arctic. And about 25 years ago in 1977 I had the opportunity to go up to backside of this island right here that's the fourth westerly island in the hierarchy. And I was able to go there twice and the other two exhibitions are I was on is on Ellesmere Island here quite close to North Pole. And I'll get to that later but those are the two areas that I fortunate to go to.

Unknown Speaker 8:15
I've I've done other adventures this part of Canada today we're just going to concentrate on high arctic Can everyone hear me still Is that okay? Sounds so good. Okay. Okay, so let's back on here

Unknown Speaker 8:44
okay, here's down here is white horses area. River

Unknown Speaker 8:58
This is banks here. Now. We're gonna go the next slide. We'll be in this area right here. So here we are. And this goes back 25 years. For me, this is the first place I went to. I'm gonna give slides in this area. Next slide, please. So I'm zooming in on this, this particular area, this area here, going into Castlebay right here is the Thompson River and it still is one of the longest navigable rivers in all of the hierarchy. And I like to claim a break. I was myself another fellow was the first white people to canoe down this river 25 years ago. I still gotta hold on to that. And that's fine. That's fine. This is the group that I went with. And we I was fisheries biologist at the time, this Cosworth studies education, these two archaeologists, and this was the leader. That's the folate eyes with Paul Wilkinson. And he was the one that introduced me to this part of the world. And I was because I had such a really excellent time, that very first time, 25 years ago, that I keep being drawn back all the time. And I hope to keep going back for as long as I can. But was mainly this fella right here that made a difference. So in the background, you'll see this is typical of that area, next to this lush, lush kind of thing here in the foreground. That's the Thompson River in the background. And some perspective, that's our canoe down here.

Unknown Speaker 11:10
This stops, you could focus on bit better. Again, Thompson River is here. This is our meat cash, you'll find on many of the notes because

Unknown Speaker 11:23
the people, the Aboriginal people, just the seasonal hunting. So what they would do to stay with either based on Muscat summer grazing downtown, or caribou. In this particular case, I think, more or less farms, and they would drive the mass in these meadows into the drawers, set up stones on the side of the draw, drive the funnel, and at the top, they slaughter them. And then they would store them in these caches like this. This is another one that's collapse but they just honestly because of permafrost under here, not too far on permanent ice. Really well. This is one of the sites that we investigated. Paul and Brock salts here and we found an area that has over 100 on bank this is my first encounter with Mount Gox. And now my wife still favorites, probably online learning we this the first thing you have to do is the next slide. And then go format as many of you might know the former defensive mechanism where they'll go into a circle and then put the little ones in the middle behind them. And the ball will usually say always, but we usually stay off the one side and we'll try it next slide. So this they're setting up the formation here and you can see the little ones in here

Unknown Speaker 13:32
I was turned by for one time. Fortunately, I'm still here to tell the tale and say So long story

Unknown Speaker 13:49
like you want to hear the story by doing a story when this book came out, I don't know if it's this one. I think it might have been this one from a mile away as you can see, you see a long way away. I watched this thing come straight for me. I just stood there and of course I was young and I thought well you know I'm gonna stand my ground and I had this pattern. I was gonna break the title and I was going to come back because I was already thinking so let's just come straight for man he stopped from here to the back wall. I was just looked at me we're both looking at each other. And of course I'm single was just come on, come on, you know, and it's not worth it runs like full tilt up on the hill. Next slide. So here's, yeah, here's these now that they look like this with them with a hairdryer. Forehead. That's it. That's one method that you can distinguish the next one. No one else is able to photograph these fledgling radar Next slide. Adults Okay, next. So about 20 years later, I go back to the same area if I want to track and I go from this basic area and I do a loop like this guy

Unknown Speaker 15:24
this is our camp, I was up there with them. And these are our tents we were in July. The next one prepping my family official jokes about next one. Some training we got into permafrost that was melting. Ice situation wasn't that cold out but walking great, and quickly going to tell a story. This fall. He's lived in the same age and I listened he was able to navigate and track by using the snowdrift because the prevailing winds are from the northwest primarily it took a whole year. And a snowdrift all line up pretty much the same type of direction. And he could use those snowdrifts to navigate and use the sun and they also use the wind on his face. And he could try like this in this kind of condition for miles and miles. So that's I mean, obviously, we had to stop on.

Unknown Speaker 17:02
What's called this this IKEA script for a lake in northern banks. And we were fishing through these cracks. And we just put take a line, lower on it, and just get underneath the ice. And within a few seconds, get an arctic char beautiful arctic char. So I got seven or eight of those in a few minutes. And I have a slide. Next slide. But in this particular leg, there was tremendous problems. And I was dressed for the calean the whole thing on the hood on and I even have the gloves, just for the bugs, not because it was cold. They would just literally cover the North Sea and cover your tent cover inside outside, just so that's the nice thing about some summaries the Arctic, not all I don't want to generalize. So now we're back here. We're gonna head up in this direction. This is about five years ago in 2000. And this is Presidents Day, on the way as far north as you can go on a commercial airline. There's about 100 people that did this, this place here. Mostly anyway, it's a weather station at West Station, airport. These are truly settlements near near our resume. This is where the truly these people who lived about 400 500 years ago and they lived in these kinds of settlements, and they hunted whales. And so they when the wealth disappeared or moved, they had to abandon this but they lived here for a few 100 years. And next slide.

Unknown Speaker 18:57
This is how they would enter their dwelling. This was these, these are whale bones that they put on top and then they put their thoughts or hives

Unknown Speaker 19:11
on top of that, so the dancer has a calling and of course the wing would cover and put snow around but hopefully this interior one this is a sleeping platform that they would get up off the coffee grounds from and they have a fireplace here in the middle that they burn seal oil.

Unknown Speaker 19:35
So they have these raised benches so here we are getting another shot of the entrance

Unknown Speaker 19:47
shots. You get the idea now, there were probably three or four or five of these in one area. This was three adults. These are scientists that I met To draw on Mars projects to place your resume, much like Mars, there was a media kit. Some of you may know this, but 23 years old many years ago, and it's much like Mars, devoid of life. So that's scientists from jet propulsion and NASA that fly in there all the time. And they dress up in their spacesuits, and they take out their their buggies. And they've done quite a bit of scientific work their budgets. These these people I met in residence in the American and Scandinavian company. This is where we're headed. In 2001. Sir Jeff house this is Ellesmere Island here. Bremen obviously. There's, there's a path that goes between right across Ellesmere Island, narrow place here. And the last time anyway completed this task. I could figure out after seven months of planning was suggested itself, and that was about 100 years ago was 1899. There have been other people that have been in there, but probably no, no one has tried to do what we tried to do. So we didn't have it took me several months of planning, we just had aerial photos to go by. And I have a job to take any reduction. So this is where we're headed here from Byron Bay, over to Flagler Bay, right across to this pass. And you see this all ice, big ice field here and glaciers there next week. So moving down, this is again, where we're planning to go we landed about here and we started tracking we were

Unknown Speaker 22:06
the idea was to go from one side to the other. This again is a diagram next place. This the team that myself and Lowe camp who also lives on the on

Unknown Speaker 22:25
the internet Canada, he and I led this expedition and the team that we had as a group of Dutch trackers. Kind of people who who have been all over the world tracking they found this particular track that or expedition that we went on with one of the most dangerous and most difficult tracks they've ever been on.

Unknown Speaker 22:49
We all survived and returned safely next week. This is a train we raised totally different. This was the equinoxes

Unknown Speaker 22:59
near the North Pole again at Hunter mountain North Pole. And this is the trainer in your mountains. Really big mountains and it's very dry. And there's no snow this is in July there's no snow and it's really dry. In fact, I'll tell you now that their average precipitation is about an inch per year. One of the driest places in North America Western cleanly dry next we have the boards This is a small little quick we had before these are glacier fed so they the best time to cross them is about four o'clock in the morning because water is at the lowest point wait till midday the water be quite high the melting of the glaciers This is a typical polar glacier. This this is a different kind of glaciers that you may have seen if you have seen the temperate glacier and this is a fully glacier. And this is quite different than that. This one melts a little bit at the top and it's quite smooth at the top and there's no water comes from the bottom like a typical temperate one. In down here we have water gouging from the bottom but the water runs off the surface here and then runs down the side so the cutting edge of the glaciers I was taking this picture and all of a sudden to cap off right here. So next and there it is coming off to Glacier. Amazing and so that it sets up these waves. Next slide

Unknown Speaker 24:49
gets bigger. Now I just wanted to quit that's the difference between the two types of glaciers. He was baffling. One things I was able to do last summer. Yes. Next slide.

Unknown Speaker 25:10
Here's the train we ran. And we had to get from where we are to here, where the crop is tennis are full of water. Very real water. So what we had to do in this case, we had to go way up to the headwaters and come back since two days to get around this section.

Unknown Speaker 25:30
These are some of the Canyons the the water just as lots of water in that Canada's next slide. And here's just a little side, Canada, glaciated, very dry, this wouldn't be. Here's the front of another glacier. This is the one insert just past the device.

Unknown Speaker 25:59
This was quite typical of many of the equations that I was able to see. Next slide, please. Yes, here's the front of it, the total of it.

Unknown Speaker 26:11
You see, there's there's, there's some water running over a lot of runs along the side here. Here's just a little trumpet came off of it. And that gives you some sense of perspective. Next slide.

Unknown Speaker 26:37
So thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 26:51
Now, now we're going to go into the trips I did last summer, thanks. We're going up into this bay here, where we were before was down about here. Now we're going by the North, up into this bay with alerts is about there. And you Rica is actually raised here. So we're north of Eureka. Yes. This debate that we were in. And as you can see from this map, there are at least seven different glaciers coming out of this big ice pack here. And we were able to, this is what we call number two glacier, this one right here. This supply of Bay. So many of the shots that you'll see later on, will be from this perspective looking at this glacier and these other glaciers will land here and then we'll fly across here. Most of these glaciers are receding, except for this one here in Otter fjord is actually advancing in a 10 year period of two or three kilometers, it's actually most of them are retreating. Next slide. This the team that I went with the Japanese scientists, I was leaving this expedition and I have five scientists from Tokyo, and Japan. These are scientists that have gone in there. This is the third year that they've been in some of them. So it's my first time to study need to follow us actually, all of these guys have been assaulted. Except for one, this fall right here that these two can This is here was June. And these two photos came as well after. They're all PhDs and some of them are teaching pure researchers and my job was to prepare for for seven months and do everything for these guys because they could do the research I gain was six, seven months of planning on finances start producing to get ready for next summer. I had to provide for all the transportation, all the combinational foods, make sure they were comfortable and they were able to do all of their experiments. I was able to do something on my own at some time to do that. The group that I had last summer and I'll have one or two these guys again, this next summer. Next slide. This is a game revolutes where we were before from a different perspective last winter in revenue phase. They didn't have any winter items in there at all to the whole winter. Next slide please. Around resume area, next slide was to kill next slide. Here's a carcass of beluga whales. Next slide. Next slide. Now we're we're at we're getting here to steady state now where I was and we're flying into it and these are typical Got glaciers in that area. To here, there's more. So higher up. The train is still very rugged, fairly easy hiking, training because

Unknown Speaker 30:11
it's a bit smoother, as you'll see. Okay, next slide. Okay, here's the beginning of those glaciers, and they all fall under these

Unknown Speaker 30:22
big ICO. And one of the experiments I'm able to do is just to see how fast these glaciers are receding. Next slide. This is typical of the area. We out there lakes, here are small lakes, as well as the glaciated not. So here, we're 700 miles north pole, study area that the Japanese going to study, hopefully will then hope maybe for the next seven years or so at least next year. This is our study area, where our campus our base camp, and one of the study areas is here, we're looking at this particular glacier. And these brains could pay particular attention to these moraines on both sides, because there were at least four or five different ice ages, these Marines had to be mapped over a three year period to determine their location. And then

Unknown Speaker 31:26
they were studying plant colonization and one of the things we're studying. So we had to, we had to do an inventory of what was there.

Unknown Speaker 31:36
So these are recent Marines here. And then as you go out into the valley here, very old Marines that have been there a long time. These are three lakes, fished in both these lakes and caught arctic char. And this is the ocean here that I mentioned before. And these are the icebergs coming out this ice field. This is where I went last summer. And this is where I'm hoping to go again. This is a while it's obvious what it is. This is fire weeds. Dwarf they call it actually river view. It's a dwarf type species. Next slide. Next site. That's number two glacier right there. That's what's so our base camp is right up in here. And that other shoppers from back here. Next slide. Next slide. They left this particular summit in over the winter, because they wanted to see how much property there was during the winter. And they came back and was booked that much going on.

Unknown Speaker 32:54
Caribou these are long story. For many reasons, in many areas, the numbers are really

Unknown Speaker 33:07
the only one that we have. Next slide. The study area very large. There's one follow up study last

Unknown Speaker 33:19
year, you're researching. You just studied monster smartlace doesn't know why your family. I mean, it's just moss last month was actually an interesting guy. Yeah. That's right. So that was his area. And he was the first thing he did when he got the helicopter he got down on his knees and looked at the mosque. That's what

Unknown Speaker 33:45
I was looking at that this study area now. So that's where I'm gonna go back hopefully next summer. Yeah, next slide.

Unknown Speaker 33:57
So I'm gonna talk just a little bit about the natural history of that area. I learned a lot since I have my laptop. My wife called the games to verify that I could write a small book on the subject. absolutely fascinated by this. And it's hard to condense it down. But most of Canada asked candidates, permafrost are either continuous or discontinuous. Permafrost is ice underneath the active layer like permanent sites that never thought and has a huge impact on our country's possibly our future. There's, there's the continuous and discontinuous that's how much permafrost affects our country. And now here it was switching quickly in the history. This is what the last Ice Age cover about 80,000 years ago that's the area that occurred was most of most of all the artists, including where I was there. But thanks, Simon. And these funds were back in the land bridge, that was the last most attend obviously, was completely covered. Okay, now, the historical study, I wanted my on topic for this subject, but I didn't, there was not enough time to talk about my interest of mine. But I have so much information on this. This is just a small sampling of some, this is a one time period in the Arctic history that shows some of these guys that went in there. Some of the routes, here's were, here's why it was the first time first and second time here, basically, where I was there. So I have I know a lot about this history. Maybe another time, I could come back and talk just strictly on Arctic history, per se. I like that. I could get invited back. Next slide, please. Here are some of the explorers that were that have done working on Ellesmere primarily over the years. And you may recognize some of these names and some of these faces. Sir Jeff, went through that pass really is terrible. I could go from one to the other tell the story. But you might, you might know something already fascinating history of what they've done, and things that they accomplished. In the Arctic tonight, I'd like to go in more detail at some other time. This, if you were to take, now we're going to switch to another subject if you take a basketball. And just think of it as a the goal of the class right now. Have to imagine that the atmosphere, our atmosphere around the globe, is only as important to one single piece of paper around the basketball, that's how thin or fragile how sin or atmospheres, I just couldn't get over that myself. So it's only like 50 6070 miles from here to Vancouver. And that's from space, what looks like next. Now, going to quickly just go into climate change, global warming, I'm not going to go into much detail, I'm just going to touch on it and make some comments on some of the things we have to start learning about is the effects of greenhouse gas effects. This carbon cycle is very important, I can go into a lot of detail. Next with this, this is the back of the room when the carbon concentrations are going to have

Unknown Speaker 38:29
when I gave my other talks, this particular slide really seem to fascinate a lot of people I have a lot of questions about this slide after the presentation. So I've included it here, you'll see that in the last 400,000 years up to the present. The temperature has fluctuated in these periods, while three times and one, four times, four and 1000 years now that coordinates with co2 concentrations natural in the same period. Now, everyone was asking, Well, why is it so high? How does that happen? You know, and there's correlation. So obviously, the big question is a warming is like a natural or manmade or combination or that kind of thing. But this obviously shows that during this time period, high concentration of co2 and warming this global warming or not, this is a global temperature average global temperature. Let's say Nike for the last six years has gone up considerably. Next slide. We have to think about this. It's very complex subject I'm finding it's not really black and white. You have cold water moving around and you have more water moving around. then if this gets out of kilter a little bit, somebody may appreciate this, it could set off while not being dramatic or anything, but it could set off quite quite a significant climate changes, York would get much colder. Not not hotter, the colder if something happens to this particular next thing we're finding actually is that it's been quite warm in the western Arctic, trending warm. But in eastern Arctic, it's a cooling phenomenon, which is something you may not have known before, which I was surprised to find to over the last 50 years next. Now, this, again, is a representation of the last 1000 years, that's sort of a baseline here, we

Unknown Speaker 40:53
thought it's getting a warm common knowledge now. Again, same same idea, 10,000 years before present this this is.

Unknown Speaker 41:07
So 10,000 years ago, this sort of training that you have those lights age down here, these are temperatures. So we're up here now, that's less

Unknown Speaker 41:23
dramatic when we're expecting actually, the temperature to rise, basing a lot of my knowledge and facts on the UN intergovernmental

Unknown Speaker 41:34
studies panel that comes out every so often. So often, I try to try to give the facts

Unknown Speaker 41:43
they're predicting that we're at work here now. Roughly, they're predicting anywhere from one one degree up to say, five degrees Celsius in the next 100 years. Now, when you do this kind of stuff, you no matter whether you just take natural things, or if you're adding what we're doing, you know, you just don't know where it's gonna go more than likely, right this kind of thing right now. Next slide, please. This is the the sources coal, oil, and natural gas efficiency. Next slide. These are some of the common gases. Carbon dioxide is the main one Methane

Unknown Speaker 42:42
is a big one, too, that he said into the Arctic methane because the permafrost or so was probably something changes the temperature even slightly. We're going to have I

Unknown Speaker 43:01
don't want to sound melodramatic or dramatic in any way. So here we have the percentages of those gases. And you'll find that Canada is writing here, number two, for tons per capita emissions of co2.

Unknown Speaker 43:23
And I heard one gas per more co2 per capita than any other country in the world. This, this, this has huge impacts on health, agriculture, forests, water resource, coastal areas, species, natural areas, I could go into each one of those in a lot of depth. And I have in my research, but obviously this talk now, next article, we are this. I mean, I'm very I'm very comfortable with this type of fat. Because this is they've done all these ice cores throughout the Arctic on the polar caps. And they found a 40% reduction in phase in the polar ice in the polar cap 40% In the last four years. So that in itself will have a big impact on many than marine animals. And some

Unknown Speaker 44:37
particularly you may have heard this on the news were quite dramatically sensational. They say well, the big thing broke off.

Unknown Speaker 44:53
polar ice cap 3000 years and it's flipped And this is wartime where they leave for the North Pole expedition and I was straight here you know. So, this was quite close to where I was working and yes this is the crack this is a satellite photo of that crack right here this was on time is here and so the crack developed down through here and the contents of this lake was freshwater on top of the saltwater freshwater and just really went out

Unknown Speaker 45:40
I found out they had a conference in Russia very recently that they say today's numbers are 160,000 people have died directly from global warming on climate change now to justify getting the number to debate

Unknown Speaker 46:08
iceberg

Unknown Speaker 46:24
now this is the last sets up a north pole. And this is the last picture that was taken at the North Pole this year before the sun went down.

Unknown Speaker 46:52
On the size of the brain Well, that's a good question. Because the Japanese says they don't get much fish. They're on whenever they get fish. It's like this fish, right. So when I came into camp one day was like this big and Australian event and they got the cameras on there. They thought it was a great. So we only caught those two. We thought we had the big blinds

Unknown Speaker 47:24
Yes. When I was a little guy, one of the things I learned it wasn't really a picture. I see the movie. You're right. That's right. Well, I just been guessing I know they looked at other slides and they have instruments set up right that would match have a webcam up there. live webcam kind of blacked out they had other instruments that are like wind gauges and temperature gauge all the different kinds. I would expect that

Unknown Speaker 48:10
while in this case, who was who was

Unknown Speaker 48:14
calling American

Unknown Speaker 48:20
probably have to go back generally glaciated, pretty smooth a number of jagged just because they were on the right.

Unknown Speaker 48:39
They were wondering the best way for me to explain that you saw and the way the ICS practice behind it is covering those. And these are just the local glaciers that come out between between the way the cars is like that's just sort of how I guess it's because the way the original rocks was laid down in the beginning. Like you say many, many areas are very smooth, very flat. These ones have survived several.

Unknown Speaker 49:34
That's sort of

Unknown Speaker 49:38
a certain point of straws. If we could actually get that all the time. In the attic. We just say even those guys have done all this research. We say well, how does this get your clothes great. Why is it lunchtime? You know, and then we start talking and trying to figure it out. And that's I really that's why I would enjoy this kind of conversation when we try to you know pulling all the stuff that we had

Unknown Speaker 50:02
and obviously there are people who do that kind of thing

Unknown Speaker 50:07
there's actually there's only a few people in that area that made it so expensive to get to do any research there are there are people Americans there are other countries doing the work

Unknown Speaker 50:31
but very few

Unknown Speaker 50:50
fact the best answer to that would be back behind that is quite a bit higher. Yeah, I would say publish that big

Unknown Speaker 51:06
yes

Unknown Speaker 51:14
one more that casts off. No

Unknown Speaker 51:22
I would think they wouldn't have

Unknown Speaker 51:29
representation. I guess I've put it in our offices

Unknown Speaker 51:41
only the females to that do that

Unknown Speaker 51:47
Muscat Yes. Caribou, the lemmings? Of course, the birds and actually Satori some of them don't need blood at all they can reproduce without

Unknown Speaker 52:11
righty thanks. Yes. Well, they're quite spread out. In fact of musk oxide it depends on the vegetation. Well, I was it was very much it was a group that or maybe five or six of you might not find them that long. But that's where the bugs were there were there were other there were some actually where the bugs were there were like there's 1000 muscongus on banks the highest concentration last drops. So they will have lots

Unknown Speaker 52:53
of soul spring which was the original partner

Unknown Speaker 53:06
that that particular character was

Unknown Speaker 53:08
Twin Otter from resolute three or four hours north to our base. Unfortunate can work guide with the daughter. Yes. Yes, certainly, I'd like to thank you. When I was when I went there first that there's always this big thing about what's happened to caribou and there was always this debate by my poor PhD in things between the caribou and the mascots Many believe that there is competition for food that's one of the reasons that many people are used for that but then there's other people who are arguing for hunting depends on your background I'm not gonna put weight on either one, but I could and then it's just an observation so much but maybe I'm just reading about this obviously just the food source right sometimes you get a really hard winter obviously when the snow was pretty terrible can't get out the vegetation so could be natural as well but it's really phenomenal in the West

Unknown Speaker 54:40
yes, they can some people depend on food source. But I solemnly at the point where it's really an issue. I don't think as far as it goes,

Unknown Speaker 54:55
it's just something that maybe it's not maybe it's happening going on right now. are in Western 95% gone down to a caribou in the Western Province you're getting something it could be but then you have this huge increase of muscle at the same time. But the parent caribou that some people are saying that's the first sort of indicator of this global warming. You're suggesting? I don't I'm not going to suggest. Any other questions? Yes.

Unknown Speaker 55:54
Yes,

Unknown Speaker 55:54
we can carry on.

Unknown Speaker 55:58
Thank you. Yes, I was able to conduct my own experiment out there. And see, there's a lot of data that a lot of research done in the Arctic. And that's why it's a great place of opportunity for anyone who wants to discover explore adventure. And do experiments, do some research, because not a lot has not been done. And sometimes we'll do a little study. So they asked a question. Yeah, I was able to take an aerial photo, going back, first of all, about 97 and compare them to about 19 years later. And I could see that the particular ratio had been receiving Well, five meters per year. So what I did is I we tried to figure this all out, like, we were saying, how would it going? How are we going with hardly no money? And we've never done this before? How are we going to figure out how much they should receive, right? So we got some paint out and we do these angles, we major, we scratch our heads for hours and hours, we finally got it set up. So we know if I go back next summer, I'll be able to see for myself how much it's going back in that one year. But the only way you're really going to be able to tell us long term. So I just heard that I was reading that they have done other photos of that area.

Unknown Speaker 57:34
Very much appreciate you coming and sharing your expertise, your adventures with us.

Unknown Speaker 57:48
Thank you very much for coming in February.