A small group of men and women clad in brightly coloured coveralls with hoses in tow wind their way through thigh-high foliage and short (by southern Canadian standards) trees on the outskirts of Kuujjuaq, the largest village in Nunavik, the Inuit homelands in Arctic Quebec.

A logo emblazoned on the sleeve of many of the jumpsuits reads, “Kativik Civil Security,” which is effectively the emergency management arm of the Kativik Regional Government that delivers public services in Nunavik.

The group consists mostly of firefighters, volunteer or otherwise, from communities across the region. They’re here as part of a two-day wildfire first responder course being taught by the Société de protection des forêts contre le feu, otherwise known as SOPFEU, the non-profit organization that serves as the province’s wildfire service.

Though geographically below the Arctic Circle, the Nunavik region has a mix of Arctic and subarctic climate and straddles the treeline, where forest fades to tundra. Training to fight wildland fire in an area surrounded by lakes and covered by green vegetation beaded by droplets of rainwater may seem confusing, perhaps even more so given that this area is covered by snow and ice from November until April or May. But for Larry Shea, a firefighter in Kuujjuaq, it makes total sense.

“We would like to be prepared for all eventualities,” Shea says. A structural firefighter for 25 years, Shea has recently found himself face-to-face with wildfires on the outskirts of Kuujjuaq, including one not far from where he now stands in his bright red overalls. That includes a 2023 wildfire that burned across the Koksoak River from Kuujjuaq, clearly visible to the fewer than 3,000 residents who call it home.

Mitch Vail, a civil security coordinator for the regional government, calls the 2023 fire “a wake-up call,” reinforcing that “These types of events can happen even in the north.” The next year, Vail reached out to SOPFEU to request training.

He wasn’t alone. Quebec’s record-breaking 2023 wildfire season saw 4.5 million hectares burn, an all-time record for the province. The following year, the number of training requests exploded. “I think 2023 opened a lot of people’s minds to the threat of wildfire,” SOPFEU liaison agent Frédéric Lalague says. Though he predominantly works with Indigenous communities across the province, he was on the fire lines in 2023.

“I think we all kind of remember where we were,” says Lalague, of the day fires exploded across the province. “We were geared up to maybe fight, you know, 30 to 40 fires at the same time, or one major fire … we had, I think, close to 150 ignitions in one day.”

In wildfire fighting, logistics “is the name of the game,” Lalague says. In Quebec, SOPFEU responds to major wildfires, but in Nunavik, the logistics of using firefighters from outside the region quickly become complicated.

All 14 communities are fly-in only, which means no ability to transport heavy, trailer-based firefighting equipment. It also means increased travel time for southern-based firefighters to get to the North and raises questions about where those firefighters would sleep, what they would eat and what they would drink when they got there.

Of course, the challenges for getting people and equipment into Nunavik communities also extend to getting people out. In Nunavik, it’s not only fires that can prompt emergency evacuations, but also community-wide issues with water supplies or power, which comes from diesel generators.

“If we’re in the south, you get in your vehicle and you drive to the next community,” Vail says. “It’s not an option here.” While the Kativik Regional Government is developing an evacuation model for communities, Vail says it’s also looking at potentially creating designated sites in or near communities that would be safe from wildfires.

Ultimately, the ideal situation is to avoid all of these complicated scenarios. That’s why SOPFEU is here: the plan is to give each community in Nunavik the training and equipment needed to act as wildfire first responders that could contain and extinguish a fire or, at the very minimum, buy some time until southern reinforcements arrive.

Satellite monitoring doesn’t assess wildfire risk as far north as Nunavik

The Kuujjuaq-based course consists of one day in the classroom and one in the field. Last summer, it was offered to communities located in the treeline: the southern edge of the region, where warmer conditions allow for more vegetation, making the threat of wildfire higher. Each community was given hoses and pumps and trained on how to use them. This year, treeline communities that couldn’t attend were invited back, and an invitation was extended to fire departments above the treeline, too.

Firefighting capability farther north is important, because even tundra is vulnerable to wildfire. The treeless tundra, which is largely characterized by ground-hugging vegetation like mosses, lichens and small plants “can be very volatile,” Vail says. “It can still cause significant damage.”

In August 2023, a tundra fire threatened Bathurst Inlet, Nvt., a seasonal community roughly 320 kilometres east of Kugluktuk, prompting a state of emergency and evacuation order. Had nobody been in Bathurst Inlet to report the fire, there’s a chance it would have consumed the site, which includes a lodge, cabins and a former Hudson’s Bay trading post.

Given the remoteness of areas where tundra fires occur, spotting them at all is a challenge and is often only possible via remote sensing. They’re not a regular occurrence in Canada, but researchers now think they happen more than previously believed.

According to satellite data from NASA and the United States Geological Survey, there were roughly 70 recorded tundra fires in Canada between 1986 and 2022. But last year, researchers with Natural Resources Canada’s Northern Forestry Centre published a reanalysis of that data done with new software, identifying an additional 209 fires during that 36-year time span.

It’s information that helps paint a better-defined picture of what “normal” may have looked like — even as climate change makes wildfires generally less predictable, as well as bigger and hotter. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2024 was the Arctic’s second-warmest year on record, which means more hot days, but also a medley of other noticeable climate-driven changes.

For Shea, this means seeing bugs, birds and animals — like moose — that he never used to. For Vail, it’s the vegetation: longer growing seasons and unfamiliar plants and trees. “If you look around, you’re probably not going to see a 200-year-old tree, but you would in the south,” he says. “The trees are moving farther north … and it’s happening faster than one might think.”

Satellites are also how SOPFEU detects everything from wildfires to lightning strikes across Quebec, including Nunavik. But its monitoring doesn’t provide any data specifically about fire risk above the 55th parallel — making it impossible for Far North communities to have the types of wildfire information and precaution systems common in the south, like a sign on the side of a highway advising passers-by of local risk level.

Given that neither the treeline nor the threat of wildland fire stops at the 55th parallel, Vail is exploring how that data can be obtained, particularly given how fast conditions can change in the north.

“We have a heat warning coming up,” Vail said in early July. “Three days of significant heat can really dry out the topography and really cause a more serious risk.”

Originally, Vail’s plan was to offer the firefighting course for two years, which he thought would be enough time to ensure each community had a chance to receive it. Now, he believes it’s going to be an annual event, both to ensure enough community members are trained and, hopefully, to continually add to the equipment being made available.

“This is a way for us to be proactive in terms of climate change, because it is going to be posing more of a risk,” Vail says.

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Iqaluit has long been a stop on federal election campaigns. But over the last few months, as Liberal Leader Mark Carney, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh each visited the Nunavut capital, something was different. While the stops still offered snowy photo opportunities, they seemed like more than a ticked box for an election campaign. In 2025, Nunavut, and the Arctic more broadly, is a serious talking point. 

Front-runners Carney and Poilievre have made splashy promises about Arctic sovereignty, which for them means increased military might and resource development, both requiring new infrastructure they promise will be a boon to local communities. But this isn’t the first time residents of Inuit Nunangat — the Inuit homelands in Canada — have been under a spotlight wielded by politicians and industry leaders. Like other Arctic states, Canada’s interest in its northern territories ebbs and flows, driven by geopolitics and trade. While increased attention can be a boon, it can also cause significant harm. 

Since 1977, the Inuit Circumpolar Council has provided Inuit across Canada, Alaska, Chukotka (Russia) and Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) — the circumpolar North, or Inuit Nunaat — with a unified voice on the global stage. Today, it represents approximately 180,000 Inuit and is chaired by Sara Olsvig of Kalaallit Nunaat. 

Olsvig spoke with The Narwhal last week about this current geopolitical moment, what those on the ground think about all the Arctic talk right now and how sovereignty for Inuit means self-determination is non-negotiable. 

“We are here as Inuit and we will be here in the future. We’ve been here for time immemorial,” Olsvig said. “We are working every day, step by step, to develop our societies in the way that we want to see them develop. Home rule and self-government arrangements — those are things that we are not backing down from.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Inuit Circumpolar Council was founded during the Cold War to provide Inuit across the circumpolar North with a platform to present a unified voice on issues ranging from the climate to global affairs. 

Yet here we are nearly 50 years later and Arctic Sovereignty is back in the spotlight in a big way.  How is what is happening now different? Or is it?

It is different. When the Inuit Circumpolar Council was founded in 1977, we were able to meet as Inuit from Kalaallit Nunaat, Canada and Alaska. And one of the first things that Inuit did was to call on the then-Soviet Union to allow Inuit from Chukotka to become members of our organization. What Inuit were able to do was to work through diplomacy, sometimes quiet diplomacy, to create those connections. 

Our shared organization, the Inuit Circumpolar Council, has been an extremely good diplomat, so to speak. We have conducted Indigenous diplomacy to re-establish those connections people-to-people, human connections between Inuit across four very, very different nation states, with four or more very, very different self-government arrangements.

That’s the big difference today, I would say. We have a Kalaallit Nunaat which has its own parliament and government, strives to become an independent state, is asserting its rights as a nation. We have other arrangements across Inuit Nunaat in Canada, different arrangements in Alaska and a whole other arrangement in Chukotka. And I think it’s really important to say that all of these arrangements and self-government of Inuit was never something that dropped down from heaven to us. It was not something that was granted us. These are achievements that we built ourselves through our own diplomatic efforts. 

Today we also have an international recognition of the rights of Indigenous Peoples and our right of self-determination affirmed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. We live under very different international institutional and legal frameworks than we did 50 years ago.

Talk around Arctic sovereignty can come from a country wanting to assert its dominance over its Arctic territories, or from Inuit sovereignty and self-determination. Which Arctic sovereignty are we hearing about right now?

There’s always been some level of pressure from the nation-states that do approach the Arctic as some kind of new frontier, more as a source of resource and expansion than an inhabited region where peoples have lived for for time immemorial. 

When we talk about sovereignty seen from an Inuit perspective, it’s always important for us to reconfirm and assert the fact that we were here for time immemorial. We have been here before state borders were drawn on maps, before different waves of settlers came in and out of the Arctic. Inuit have thrived and survived and lived here, regardless of whatever kinds of acts of securitization or acts of sovereignty in a state-centered way have happened. 

I always get quite proud to know that Inuit leaders for many, many decades have had the skills to navigate those different spheres of how you view the world, how you can act side-by-side with states who pursue a certain kind of sovereignty at the same time as not losing our inherent Indigeneity and Inuit way of living, an Inuit way of conceiving and thinking of sovereignty. Those things can coexist. We have bandwidth in our heads and as Inuit to navigate those things. States and others think that Indigenous Peoples don’t think about hard security issues or Westphalian state sovereignty and so on. But that’s not true. That’s exactly what we have been navigating in our assertion of our rights.

Much of the driving force behind the Arctic sovereignty and security conversations comes from southerners, extraction and shipping industry leaders and politicians who live outside of the Arctic. No one community across the Arctic is the same, but when you speak with Inuit around the circumpolar North, do your conversations sound remotely similar to what we’re seeing in headlines?

It’s exactly correct what you’re saying, that no Inuit community is the same. We have very different relationships with the states within which we live, very different relationships with the military organizations of those states. Some Inuit organizations and rights holder organizations and so forth work in close partnerships with the defense of the state they live in, making a lot of their income from servicing the defense and military presence in those regions. In Kalaallit Nunaat, Greenland, the agreements about U.S. military presence here were done before we had any say in international relations. Nevertheless, the government of Kalaallit Nunaat has paved its way into making this not a bilateral U.S.-Denmark relation, but a trilateral relation between Kalaallit Nunaat, Denmark and the U.S. 

Across Inuit Nunaat broadly from Chukotka, Alaska, Canada, we have quite different views on nationhood. When I speak to Canadian or Alaskan Inuit, they might have a different view on their sense of nationality [or the] presence of military in our homelands. What is cross-cutting for all Inuit is our right of self-determination. That we ourselves are those to decide what relationship we want with the military presence. We do not want to see repetition of historical events, such as forceful displacement of people of Inuit in relation to creating new military installations. We do not want to see a militarization where we are not included in decision-making.

The bottom line is that there is no such thing as saying, “You have a self-determination, but only to this line”. We also have self-determination on those areas that states would consider hard security or sovereignty, and therefore we still have some way to go in terms of working with our states to fully implement our rights of self-determination.

Countries are driving a global Arctic security conversation, but what is being discussed on the local level? Are there different priorities, such as health, housing, and food security?

That’s a question that speaks to the importance of remembering that we have the bandwidth to encompass both. We do conceive of other forms of security in our societies as being related to our human security — access to health services, access to infrastructure and so forth. All of those things are deeply related to our human security, as are the more hard security issues. One thing does not exclude the other. And if we as Inuit do not continue to have our focus on both, we know that, especially on the hard security issues, these decisions will continue to be taken without us. 

In 1977, when the council was founded, one of our first resolutions, 7711, talked about how we as Inuit want our region to be peaceful, to be used for peaceful purposes only. We reaffirmed that resolution in 2022. And I think if we as Arctic Indigenous peoples didn’t say so, who would? But we do say it with open eyes and open ears, knowing what’s going on around us. These past months here in Kalaallit Nunaat, I can say that hard security issues are also something that people talk about on the streets and over coffee.

Discussions about access to “critical minerals” and Arctic shipping routes — like the Northwest Passage, which itself is a 175-year-old conversation — are not new. How much of today’s dialogue about these topics are driven by the clear effects of climate change in the Arctic?

I often see the narrative that, you know, ice is melting and the resources are suddenly available. That’s not how it is here in Kalaallit Nunaat. There’s been mapping of the resources of Kalaallit Nunaat for centuries. We have a high degree of knowledge about what resources are here. 

I think the big difference across Inuit Nunaat is, again, the level of how concretely we can exercise our right of self-determination into terms of deciding to utilize those resources, extract those resources or not. We here in Kalaallit Nunaat have full self-determination on whether to mine or not. The whole resource extraction question became a cornerstone in the economic relationship between Kalaallit Nunaat and Denmark with the self-government agreement from 2009. That’s not the case for all Inuit. The basic principle of the questions of resource extraction is that no projects go ahead without free, prior, informed consent obtained before starting. 

I would say the same about shipping. Inuit are ship owners. Inuit are big fish company owners. We are dependent on being able to navigate the seas we have, which we have done for millennia and we have transitioned into huge, successful businesses. That’s also why Inuit Circumpolar Council worked so hard to become part of the Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Agreement, to sit with states and make sure that no decisions are taken without us. So when we talk about shipping lanes, I think that on one hand, in some mainstream media it’s a bit exaggerated and on the other hand, it sounds as if it’s another one of those, Arctic frontiers where people will go because nobody’s ever been there. But that’s not true. 

What we need to do is to make sure that everybody who goes to the waters across Inuit Nunaat do so in a way that least harms the environment, biodiversity, our flora and fauna. We are working to influence that through the International Maritime Organization, demanding that ships make less noise, because underwater radiated noise will affect our marine mammals and then that will then affect our access to hunting. This is about us asserting our seat at the table to inform the regulations on how shipping is conducted.

Part of the global push for critical minerals is an economic response to climate change. Government and industry says mining is essential to extract minerals such as high-quality ore that requires less energy to turn into steel, or the components needed for electric vehicles.

On one hand, this resource extraction could potentially help efforts to curb climate change globally, while providing jobs and increasing infrastructure locally. On the other hand, such projects have significantly harmed culture and the environment in the past and pose similar risks now. How can situations like this be navigated in a meaningful and respectful way?

I was honoured last year to take part in the United Nations Secretary General’s panel on critical energy transition minerals, as one of two Indigenous persons on the panel, together with the former chair of the United Nations Permanent Forum, Mejia Montalvo. It was a tough job, but we got the outcome document of this panel’s work to include full recognition of the rights of Indigenous Peoples— the right of self-determination, regardless of the world’s pressure. Even calls from other places in the world saying “you have better regulation, so we will do less human rights violations if we mine in your region than in this region”. In spite of all this pressure, and maybe even exactly because of all this pressure, what we must remember is that we have a right to say no. 

If we don’t want a uranium mine, we’ll say no, like we did in Kalaallit Nunaat, or the people in south Greenland did. If we see that there’s a need for a specific mineral, let’s talk about it. In the end, if the Indigenous Peoples in mind are saying, “That’s not the road we want to take,” that needs to be respected. 

At the Conference of Parties last year, in Baku, there was a fellow Indigenous woman from Belize, who represents a people that want to transition over to solar panels. And she raised a really interesting question — how can she make sure that the minerals that were used to produce the solar panels have not been extracted by violating other Indigenous People’s rights? And that question, to me, pinpointed the issue: we have to work with an industry which has a terrible track record. 

So we need to change the industry, make the industry accountable. And how do we do that? Well we make sure that we can trace where the minerals come from, that those who are involved in producing and exporting and so on are made accountable in terms of human rights. That’s going to be a huge task, but that was the recommendation coming out of the panel. And of course, to ramp up circularity. Remove some of the pressure by ensuring that we have reuse of minerals. 

The point of departure in this panel’s work was that 55 per cent, at least, of the known deposits are on or near Indigenous Peoples’ land, so we have no option but to address it. We all know as Inuit that our lands are rich. So this is something that we will have in front of us to discuss and decide upon in many years to come. 

What I hope for everyone is that we find ways of doing this that doesn’t divide us. We’ve been through tough times here in Kalaallit Nunaat discussing that possible uranium mine. I belong to those who do not want to do uranium mining, but I’ve met with fellow Inuit and citizens who did want to do uranium mining, who were in trouble in terms of employment and income. So these paradoxes and dilemmas we will meet time and time again, and we need to approach them in a good way where we can reach a common understanding of what our different positions are and find the best way ahead.

Over the last few months, the world has become a little more volatile. The Inuit Circumpolar Council operates in four countries, with some projects, like protecting the waters of Pikialasorsuaq, or the North Water Polynya, literally spanning borders. How impacted has the council been by this shift? 

It’s different from case to case, so particularly on the Pikialasorsuaq initiative between Kalaallit Nunaat and Canada, it seems that our governments are pursuing a positive development. We are supporting that. It might be different in other areas of Inuit Nunaat — we have yet to see exactly what’s going to be the situation. As you know, elections have taken place, are taking place and new administrations or old administrations are getting in place. 

I do want to point to Inuit Circumpolar Council Alaska, which recently convened an Alaskan Inuit leadership summit with very, very strong and clear statements coming out of it. It’s important to say that there is no such thing as a better colonizer. Each of us have very complex relationships with the states around us and you cannot compare and say that it’s better to be Inuk here or there. This is the time where we stand side by side, shoulder by shoulder, and do not allow ourselves to be pitted against each other. 

Was there anything else you’d like to add?

These are the times where we should all consider increasing our international engagement. This is the time where we go to the international venues and make our voices heard, assert our seat at the table. That’s something that I hope to see more of in the future, more Inuit youth, more Inuit leadership, more Inuit knowledge-holders to go out there and speak on behalf of our interests so that we can implement what we have been saying for so many years — nothing about us without us. 

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Two years ago, the world lost a Manhattan-sized piece of the Milne Ice Shelf, one of the last, thickest — and at the time, most intact — ice shelves of its kind in the Canadian Arctic. In July, for the first time since that calving event, a small team of researchers touched down on one of the northernmost points on the planet to study what led to that collapse. They were also seeking answers about what it means for the entire ecosystem.

Although an ever-growing array of space-based technology allows scientists to observe and collect data on the Arctic remotely — including the satellite cameras that first alerted scientists with the Canadian Ice Service that 79 square kilometres of once land-fast ice was adrift in the Arctic Ocean — there’s no substitute for actually being there. 

That’s why scientists like Derek Mueller, a glaciologist with the Water and Ice Research Laboratory at Carleton University in Ottawa, have made an annual trip to the Milne Fiord for the past 14 years.

Getting to this remote location north of Resolute, Nvt., is no small feat. As the crow flies, Milne Fiord is roughly as far from Toronto as Halifax is from Victoria. Natural Resources Canada’s Polar Continental Shelf Program supports this Far North research by providing field equipment, accommodations in Resolute and transportation to the fiord. But like so many things these last two years, the pandemic made these trips impossible. 

The anticipation was almost palpable on a cloudy July day when Mueller and a team of international scientists finally boarded a De Havilland Twin Otter aircraft loaded with camping gear, scientific tools and minds full of post-calving event questions. 

They hoped the instruments they placed under the ice three years ago would provide answers — assuming they were intact and could be found. Other investigations would require a medley of hands-on work orchestrated around the availability of a helicopter, needed to effectively navigate the icy expanse of the fiord, which extends more than 80 kilometres from the tip of the shelf to the top of the glacier. 

But when conducting fieldwork at the top of the world, even the best-laid plans can change at a moment’s notice.

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Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is at odds with Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. over the risk posed by a potentially invasive aquatic worm found nearby the company’s Mary River mine port on north Baffin Island, Nunavut.

According to the department, Baffinland should be developing a response plan to address Marenzelleria, the “high-risk potential aquatic invasive species that has been introduced to Milne Port.” 

This comes from a letter DFO submitted to the Nunavut Impact Review Board on Oct. 18 as part of the board’s assessment of Baffinland’s phase two development proposal, which would double the mine’s iron ore production to be shipped out of Milne Inlet, from six million tonnes per year to 12 million. 

The board fielded many submissions about the project’s impacts on some of the Arctic’s sentinel species such as caribou and narwhal. 

If Baffinland’s expansion is approved, project-related ship traffic will increase substantially. 

Currently, Baffinland’s permits do not limit vessel traffic, but the company proposed to limit vessels received at Milne Port to 84 per year, which allows the mine to ship 6 million tonnes of ore — their current permitted production level.

Under its second phase of development, Baffinland said the number of ore carriers at the Milne Port would be doubled to 168 per year. Iron ore is primarily used in steelmaking. Canada is one of the top-producing iron ore countries in the world, producing 58.8 million tonnes in total in 2019, according to Natural Resources Canada. Nine per cent of Canada’s iron ore is produced at the Mary River mine.

Milne Inlet opens off Eclipse Sound, just west of the community of Pond Inlet, and south of Tallurutiup Imanga National Marine Conservation Area — protected for its biodiversity and the critical role it plays in Arctic ecosystems, and its cultural importance to Inuit. Despite this level of protection, the marine region is not immune to the varying threats that shipping presents.

The final hearing for the expansion is currently underway in Iqaluit, with territorial and federal departments — including DFO — participating, as well as Nunavut community representatives, hunters and trappers organizations and environmental organizations. 

The hearing wraps up on Saturday with the board expected to release its report on the proposed expansion in the coming months. Final approval rests with the federal Minister of Northern Affairs Canada, Dan Vandal.

Increase in Marenzelleria worms since Baffinland’s Mary River operations began

Both the Qikiqtani Inuit Association and the Mittimatalik Hunters and Trappers Organization voiced concerns over invasive species arriving in the ballast water of Baffinland’s ore carriers during a marine monitoring workshop in Pond Inlet in August 2020, according to a letter sent to Baffinland by the review board.

Marenzelleria is a genus of benthic — or bottom-dwelling — worms known to be highly invasive. One or more species of the worms have invaded parts of the Pacific Ocean, North Sea, Baltic Sea, Barents Sea and others. 

Ralf Bastrop, a research associate at the University of Rostock, in Germany, has studied worms like Marenzelleria for nearly 30 years. In the Baltic Sea, where several invasive species of the worms have invaded, Bastrop said that in great enough quantities, Marenzelleria can have an impact on water chemistry. By burrowing through the seafloor, the worms expose sediment to oxygen, releasing various nutrients. Depending on the geographic area, burrowing could also lead to the release of poisons like polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB), highly toxic synthetic chemicals.

Other scientific papers in the field have discussed the possibility that invasive Marenzelleria and changes to the nutrient cycle could potentially alter local food chains.

But as Bastrop is quick to reinforce, what happens in one marine environment, might not happen in another. “It’s very difficult to say what happens in the Baltic will also happen in the Canadian Arctic.”

Marenzelleria was first found through Baffinland’s monitoring efforts at the company’s Milne Port in 2016, after the mine began shipping ore. Although only a single specimen was found that year, and details about where it was found are unknown, two more were identified in 2017 near the existing ore dock.

The following year, 301 specimens of Marenzelleria were found, some around the ore dock, with the majority located in an estuarine area at the mouth of Phillips Creek on the western side of the inlet. The estuary was not tested again in 2019, but 16 specimens were found that year near the existing dock. 

In 2020 the company returned to the western side of the inlet and found 256 specimens, though none were found in the area around the ore dock. 

In an email to The Narwhal, Baffinland clarified that targeted sampling in 2020 at locations where Marenzelleria was found in 2019 yielded no specimens to send for analysis. 

War of the worms: debate over Marenzelleria specimens found near Mary River mine

What sets samples of Marenzelleria found in 2019 and 2020 apart from the previous collections is that they were, at least initially, independently verified by a company called Biologica and the University of Laval as Marenzelleria Viridis — a highly invasive species Baffinland lists as high-risk. Biologica recommended a third expert be consulted to verify the species of the worm.

In an Aug. 17 technical memo, prepared by Golder Associates, Baffinland explained that a third independent reviewer reidentified the marine worms found in Milne Inlet in 2020 as Marenzelleria Arctia —  a species native to the Beaufort Sea in the western Arctic that Baffinland does not consider invasive. 

Baffinland told The Narwhal that while the worm’s reclassification was based on a visual examination, it was supported with other evidence surveyed in Milne Inlet, including a diversity of bottom-dwelling life, no signs of invasive behaviour and environmental conditions such as water temperature and salinity. 

Bastrop agrees that evidence such as temperature and salinity supports the idea that the specimens found are Arctia and not Viridis, though he also acknowledges that visual examinations and a survey of environmental conditions aren’t foolproof.

“The only way to definitely say which species occurs [there] is [through] genetic identification,” Bastrop said.

Baffinland said that samples collected in 2021 are currently being sorted and, should any species of Marenzelleria be found, specimens will be sent to the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding at the University of Guelph for analysis. 

In their memo Baffinland also said that they “will treat all identified Marenzelleria specimens as having the potential to be invasive until the classification of [Marenzelleria Arctia] is confirmed through molecular methods.”

But DFO’s position suggests that even if the worms are identified as the Arctia species, there is still reason for concern.

“Regardless of the details concerning the specific species identity, there is clear evidence that all specimens in question are of the Marenzelleria genus. They appeared in close vicinity of the Milne Port ore dock and anchorages, for the first time in 2016, after initiation of project ore-related shipping,” DFO stated in its letter to the board. “Thus, DFO still has concerns about their origins and their potential to become invasive.”

No invasive species identified: Baffinland

Despite ongoing debates about the specimens collected, during a Nunavut Impact Review Board’s community roundtable session earlier this week, Lou Kamermans, Baffinland’s director of sustainable development, doubled-down on the company’s position that the worms found so far are not invasive.

“To date, we’ve not identified invasives in our monitoring program,“ Kamermans said, in response to a question from a community member. 

“There have been times species have been found that we’ve looked at further. But in each case, that’s been ruled out.”

However, DFO notes that Baffinland’s own aquatic invasive species protocol states that “an introduction is considered project-related if a species/taxon was not documented in baseline surveys or if there are no documented occurrences in the Canadian Arctic before the commencement of shipping operations.”

Marenzelleria did not appear in Baffinland’s baseline surveys. But the company explained to The Narwhal that it is not possible for baseline sampling to capture all species living in a given environment, and that the more sampling is conducted, the more are found. As a result, the company said it created and maintains an inventory for Milne Inlet that is updated with newly detected taxa every year and shared with other groups, including DFO.

Without knowing exactly where the Marenzelleria came from, DFO concludes that “as the sole operator at Milne Port, it is reasonable to assume that any new records of Marenzelleria at Milne Port, are attributable to project-related activities.”

Baffinland, however, concludes that “the available evidence suggests that this worm is native to Arctic waters, has a broad Arctic distribution and cannot conclusively be identified as a project-related introduction.”

By the time the second phase would be in operation, Kamermans said new shipping regulations will be in place requiring ballast water exchanges before vessels enter Canadian waters, as well as the treatment of that ballast water.

“For phase two, we have even more confidence that the vessels coming to Milne port won’t be a source of invasives,​​” Kamermans said, during the board’s community roundtable.

According to Baffinland, DFO will be working alongside Transport Canada to monitor those exchanges.

Updated Nov. 9 at 12:34 p.m. ET: this article was updated to clarify that the production increase for Mary River phase two will go from six million tonnes per year to 12 million tonnes per year.Updated Nov. 17 at 11:43 a.m. ET: this article was updated to correct that the species found has been suggested to be Marenzelleria Arctia — not Marenzelleria Arctica.

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