New coral garden discovered in Nunatsiavut
Bubblegum coral, popcorn coral, the cold-water corals of the Canadian Arctic have a tough skin when it comes to finding them at depths of over 500 meters. And nothing beats the experience of Nunatsiavut’s harvesters.
What fisherman hasn’t dreamed of seeing the bottom of the ocean? And what oceanographer hasn’t dreamed of finding a mysterious hanging coral garden? Nothing seems impossible along the coast of Nunatsiavut, where one underwater discovery after another has been made in the frigid Labrador Sea since 2021. Finding a coral hanging from a rock by its “feet” is a bit like looking for a needle in the middle of a haystack. Except here the stack is an underwater rock and the barn is the bottom of Canadian waters – still badly hydrographed. At least, that’s what Université du Québec cartographer Vincent Lecours told EOS after publishing a study last year praising the benefits of sharing knowledge between indigenous peoples and scientists. A method that works. On July 18, during the second phase of the Amundsen Science Expedition, a second coral wall was discovered and extensively studied, a stretch of inhabited rock then named Sentinel.
Sentinel? Perhaps a reverence for harvesters – as Canadian subsistence fishermen of Inuk descent are known – who know the water well? Joey Angnatok has been setting his nets in Nunatsiavut since he was 10. He has been particularly supportive of the Inuit people following the wave of suicides in 2000, and has been working with researchers since 1989. His 19-meter boat, What’s Happening, collects data in addition to fishing.
An annotation from Joey Angnatok’s logbook in 2019 is of interest to scientists: “Never come back here again”, reads an entry in EOS. The fisherman had damaged equipment on an unfamiliar seabed. One thing led to another and the Amundsen Science expedition of 2021 discovered the Makkovik Hanging Garden. Then, other clues arose. A second garden a hundred kilometers to the north? A camera launched blindly last year captures a photograph of a coral reef. One tree alone does not make a forest.
“He had mentioned a site where the bottom was rough with relief. That’s what we’re looking for in corals that live on rocks,” explains Bárbara Neves, a researcher with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, who boarded the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen last July. Departing from Newfoundland, the ship sailed to an area between Hopedale and Nain, less than 100 kilometres from the coastline, returning to the site with the ROV Astrid. “We refined our estimates with bathymetry and water temperature before launching the ROV,” she states.
She recalls, four pilots on deck, manning the controls from the command room, and “the researchers bursting with joy”. The team discovered “bubblegum” corals growing “head” downwards, “in high density on an inclined vertical wall lying between 550 and 570 meters below the surface”, she recounts. Starfish hung in the coral’s ramifications, living in the darkness of four-degree water, surrounded by redfish, shrimp…
“A warmer Atlantic current flows up here, there is productivity and the habitat is undoubtedly important,” continues the researcher. “But the link to the rest of the coastal ecosystem is not known.” The researchers would like to estimate the age of certain corals that appear to be large and their distribution along the coast. Many other questions remain unanswered.
There are two goals that motivate Canadian governments to find these answers. The self-determination of native peoples on the one hand, and the protection of 30% of marine habitats by 2030 on the other. “Equitable use of indigenous knowledge and knowledge from their own research program” is important for Nunatsiavut, reads a 2023 article written by a research group including Bárbara Neves and Joey Angnatok. It’s a win-win situation, given that the Canadian government is committed to achieving its own ocean goals alongside some 200 other countries on the international stage.
Camille Lin, Polar Journal AG
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