Identification of Arctic Food Fish Species for Anthropogenic Contaminant Testing Using Geography and Genetics

The identification of food fish bearing anthropogenic contaminants is one of many priorities for Indigenous peoples living in the Arctic. Mercury (Hg), arsenic (As), and persistent organic pollutants including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are of concern, and these are reported, in some cases for the first time, for fish sampled in and around King William Island, located in Nunavut, Canada. More than 500 salmonids, comprising Arctic char, lake trout, lake whitefish, and ciscoes, were assayed for contaminants. The studied species are anadromous, migrating to the ocean to feed in the summers and returning to freshwater before sea ice formation in the autumn. Assessments of muscle Hg levels in salmonids from fishing sites on King William Island showed generally higher levels than from mainland sites, with mean concentrations generally below guidelines, except for lake trout. In contrast, mainland fish showed higher means for As, including non-toxic arsenobetaine, than island fish. Lake trout were highest in As and PCB levels, with salmonid PCB congener analysis showing signatures consistent with the legacy of cold-war distant early warning stations. After DNA-profiling, only 4–32 Arctic char single nucleotide polymorphisms were needed for successful population assignment. These results support our objective to demonstrate that genomic tools could facilitate efficient and cost-effective cluster assignment for contaminant analysis during ocean residency. We further suggest that routine pollutant testing during the current period of dramatic climate change would be helpful to safeguard the wellbeing of Inuit who depend on these fish as a staple input to their diet. Moreover, this strategy should be applicable elsewhere.

Beach observations of plastic and marine litter along the Northwest Passage

<p>Marine litter and microplastics are everywhere. Even the Arctic Ocean, Svalbard and Jan Mayen Island are contaminated as various publications confirm. Little, however, is reported about marine waters and shores of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. This poster presents the results of a privately funded citizen science observation to scan remote beaches along the Northwest Passage for marine litter pollution.</p><p>The observations were conducted while enjoying the 2019 Northwest Passage sailing expedition of the Tecla, a 1915 gaff-ketch herring drifter. The expedition started in Ilulissat, Greenland, on 1 August and ended in Nome, Alaska, on 18 September. After crossing Baffin Bay, the ship continued along Pond Inlet, Navy Board Inlet, Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, Peel Sound, Franklin Strait, Rea Strait, Simpson Strait, Queen Maud Gulf, Coronation Gulf, Amundsen Gulf, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi Sea and Bering Strait. The vessel anchored in the settlement harbours of Pond Inlet, Taloyoak, Gjoa Haven, Cambridge Bay and Herschel Island. In addition, Tecla’s crew made landings at remote beaches on Disko Island (Fortune Bay, Disko Fjord), Beechey Island (Union Bay), Somerset Island (Four Rivers Bay), Boothia Peninsula (Weld Harbour), King William Island (M’Clintock Bay), Jenny Lind Island, and at Kugluktuk and Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula.</p><p>Following the categorization of the OSPAR Guideline for Monitoring Marine Litter on Beaches, litter observations were conducted without penetrating the beach surfaces. Beach stretches scanned varied in length from 100-400 m. No observations were conducted at inhabited settlements or at the abandoned settlements visited on Disko Island (Nipisat) and Beechey Island (Northumberland House).</p><p>Observations on the most remote beaches found 2-5 strongly bleached or decayed items in places such as Union Bay, Four Rivers Bay, Weld Harbour, Jenny Lind Island (Queen Maud Gulf side). Landings within 15 km of local settlements (Fortune Bay, Disko Fjord, Kugluktuk, Tuktoyaktuk) or near military activity (Jenny Lind Island, bay side) showed traces of local camping, hunting or fishing activities, resulting in item counts between 7 and 29. At the lee shore spit of M’Clintock Bay, significant pollution (> 100 items: including outboard engine parts, broken ceramic, glass, clothing, decayed batteries, a crampon and a vinyl record) was found, in contrast to a near-pristine beach on the Simpson Strait side. The litter type and concentration, as well as the remains of a building and shipwrecked fishing vessel indicate that this is an abandoned settlement, possibly related to the construction of the nearby Distant Early Warning Line radar site CAM-2 of Gladman Point. DEW Line sites have long been associated with environmental disturbances.</p><p>Given the 197 beach items recorded, it can be concluded that the beaches of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, which are blocked by sea ice during most of the year, are not pristine. Truly remote places have received marine pollution for decades to centuries. Where (abandoned) settlements are at close range pollution from local activities can be discovered, while ocean currents, wind patterns, ice rafting, distance to river mouths, and flotsam, jetsam and derelict also determine the type and amount of marine litter along the Northwest Passage.</p>

Pattern Interrupt

Operating in contested fields often requires agile and lateral actions to keep a project moving. Pattern Interrupt was an autonomous, discursive mobile artwork, located outside and between the institutional surroundings of RMIT University. It speculated on the tactical actions needed to work creatively within Melbourne’s public realm via a playful discussion series, augmented through a card game that stimulated the sharing of experiences between AAANZ Conference delegates, drawing on their various roles in the field. The cards distilled my accumulated insights from provisional experiments, workarounds and shortfalls as a transdisciplinary practitioner working in public art. They harnessed the language and format of artist instructions such as Oblique Strategies (1975) by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt and early management games, such as Distant Early Warning (1969) by Marshall McLuhan. Operating at the intersection of publication and game, the deck of cards specifically challenged the linear format of a book or presentation as a way to distil findings from the field. Instead, it was a dynamic set of chance operations that could be reapplied within practice while remaining open to multiple interpretations. As a live laboratory, it articulated and activated knowledge/s drawn from the public realm. It offered participants an opportunity to find play in bureaucratic systems, and to work around intractable public art predicaments together.

“The Distant Early Warning System”: The Online Public Sphere and the Contemporary Artistic Movement in Saudi Arabia

Abstract“Social media,” Saudi artist Abdullah al-Shehri (known as Shaweesh) observes, is the “best tool we have available to showcase and express our art,” because it allows millions of Saudis to share and comment on a given work of art simultaneously. Building on this insight, this essay argues that Saudi artists, who have among the largest followings on the country's social media, have used the online public sphere to build a new social movement. They have adopted a role akin to Antonio Gramsci's concept of organic intellectuals – namely, men and women who are not part of the traditional intellectual elite, but who, through the language of culture, articulate feelings and experiences the masses cannot easily express. To paraphrase Ezra Pound, Saudi artists are the “antennae” of the kingdom's society, whose work is not “mere self-expression,” but, in the words of Marshall McLuhan, the “distant early warning system that can always be relied upon to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.” As a leading Saudi artist Abdulnasser Gharem observed in June 2019, “people need to listen to the artist.”

The DEW Line and Canada’s Arctic Waste: Legacy and Futurity

During the Cold War, the United States and Canada embarked on an ambitious military construction project in the Arctic to protect North America from a northern Soviet attack. Comprised of sixty-three stations stretching across Alaska, Canada’s Arctic, Greenland, and Iceland, the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line constitutes both the largest military exercise and waste remediation project in Canadian Arctic history. Despite the massive cleanup operation undertaken, the DEW Line’s waste legacy endures as a prominent and deeply rooted feature of Canada’s Arctic history. Drawing upon a rich historical, anthropological, military, political science, and environmental studies literature, this article explores waste as a key issue in the shifting narratives concerned with the modernization of the Canadian Arctic. While the DEW Line has been extensively analyzed in terms of its effects on the modernization of the Arctic, this article seeks to link Canadian sovereignty, security, resource exploitation, environmental stewardship, and Inuit self-determination directly to waste issues. As industrial activity and military exercises stand to significantly increase in the Arctic, I want to draw attention to the lessons of the DEW Line; that ”develop now; remediate later” incurs steep human health, environmental, financial, and political costs.