In winter there are usually cracks from the points of land and I can
put my net under water. But now there are hardly any cracks so I can’t fish for char any
more.
Qikiqtarjuaq resident (unnamed)
Beaufort Sea Project Reprints - Fishes, Invertebrates and Marine Plants
This book is the last of the five summary books produced and was published in 1985, ten years
after the field work was undertaken. It provides an introduction to the fish, marine invertebrates
such as crabs and shrimp, and plant life including the role of plankton as the basis of the
marine food chain. The complex marine environment is explained in terms of the interaction of
the vast water flows into the ocean from the Mackenzie River which causes variable salinity
as the fresh and salt waters mix. This diverse environment provides great variability in the
relationships between the fish, invertebrates and plants that inhabit this region.
The report then discusses potential impacts of industrial development primarily from the
exploration for gas and oil reserves. Community subsistence fishing is discussed including
the socio-economic effects of the development activity. The specific dangers and impacts of
oil spills on the ecosystem are reviewed.
The impact of full-scale production on the environment with regard to the early phases
of exploration, then production and transportation of the oil from this region, it is
suggested, might constitute a greater risk than a single catastrophic blowout or spill
from a grounded oil tanker. Experience on the North Slope of Alaska and the pipeline to
Valdez would bear out this conclusion.
Fishes, Invertebrates and Marine Plants - The Beaufort Sea and the Search for Oil (reprint)
by Roger Percy, Brian Smiley and Trudy Mullen
Edited by R.J. Childerhose
Art Direction by Marj Trim
Line drawings by Joey Morgan
Reproduced with the permission of Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, 2010.
167 pages (PDF format - 101 MB)
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