Tracking Coastal Fish Movements in the Western Canadian Arctic to Address Community Concerns and Understand Flexibility to Ecosystem Change

Climate-driven change in Arctic ecosystems includes the ongoing northern range expansion of sub-Arctic fauna and the contraction of the distribution of common Arctic fauna. These fluctuations are rapidly impacting food webs and communities across the Arctic with unknown consequences for subsistence fisheries and the ecological integrity of Arctic food webs. Measures of ecological niche and adaptive response of marine fauna to climate often lack data on movement behaviour. In particular, there is a lack of understanding of the fundamental drivers and regulators of coastal fish movement and habitat connectivity among coastal Arctic ecosystems. Inuvialuit, Inuit, researchers and policymakers have identified a need to better understand the movement of key subsistence and ecologically important marine fish in relation to a changing environment. This project focuses on Arctic char and Greenland cod, identified as priority fish by the community of Ulukhaktok and aims to develop a multi-layered co-produced dataset that will ultimately be used to predict fish distributions and behaviour under climate scenarios and facilitate the adaptive and sustainable response of communities to react to ecosystem changes.