DOI: 10.5443/11336
title: Global Warming and Arctic Marine Mammals (GWAMM)

description: The GWAMM project has developed a Community-Based Monitoring (CBM) network within the greater Hudson Bay region. Our goal was to monitor marine ecosystem change using apex predators but also to understand the drivers of change. Results provided policy information required to allow northerners the ability to adapt to the environmental changes. During the Inuit subsistence hunts of 2007, the network relied on Arviat and Sanikiluaq community involvement. In 2008 and 2009, we expanded the network to include the communities of Repulse Bay and Igloolik, respectively. Partnering with northerners provided whale and seal tissue samples from hunts as well as a collection of prey species representing parts of the marine environment. A reference collection of samples from the complete food web was developed and used to build a model of trophic interactions from marine mammals down to nutrients and phytoplankton. GWAMM is also a network project that links to other marine mammal research projects in the region including satellite-telemetry movement studies of polar bears, seals, and whales, and photo-identification of bowhead and killer whales, and use of chemical signals to understand whale and seal diet, and tracking predation effects caused by invasive species such as killer whales. Results indicated that with declining sea ice, the Hudson Bay marine ecosystem is shifting from a polar bear-seal system with Inuit hunters at the apex to one dominated by cetaceans with killer whales at the apex. This shift is eroding Inuit traditional subsistence culture. As a result, our project has the added goal to provide northerners with information required to adapt to a rapidly changing world where Arctic marine mammal populations are showing demographic strain due to polar warming.
description: Purpose: The GWAMM project is focused on the Hudson Bay region and supports the core activity of developing Community-Based Monitoring (CBM) network using marine mammals as the focus. Marine mammal tissues and potential prey were collected from Inuit subsistence hunts in five communities: Arviat, Sanikiluaq, Repulse Bay, Igloolik, and Pangnirtung. The objectives are to engage northerners in ecosystem science, develop community sampling, enhance Arctic science by distributing collected samples to Canadian government and University research laboratories, model the Hudson Bay ecosystem, and conduct space-use research into polar bears, whales, and seals. The final outcome of this combined effort is to provide policy information necessary to inform northerners of how they can adapt to marine ecosystem changes associated with polar warming and the resulting changes to marine mammal distribution and abundance. The GWAMM project is linked to other Canadian IPY projects: ¿Marine Birds¿, ¿Circumpolar Flaw Lead¿, ¿Greenland Sharks¿, ¿Pan-Arctic Beluga¿, ¿Country Food Safety in a Changing Arctic¿, ¿Polar Bears¿, ¿People of a Feather and Ice¿ and internationally within the ESSAR and PAN-AME clusters. Collaborations have been developed to extend the community-based monitoring effort across the Canadian Arctic (Makavik, Fisheries Joint Management Commission, Nunatsiavut-Labrador Inuit Association, Ocean Tracking Network), across international governments (Greenland/Denmark, Russia, United States-Alaska, Norway, Finland), and organizations (Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program, Sustained Arctic Observing Network, Circumpolar Arctic Flora and Fauna).
description: Summary: A changing climate is affecting the habitat of many species of Arctic wildlife and may lead to shifts within Arctic food webs and ecosystems. This project is monitoring key marine mammals to determine whether this ecosystem is experiencing any change. Of most interest are predator-prey relationships like that of the polar bear and seal. By combining technologies such as satellite telemetry, genetic identification, and computer modelling with traditional knowledge, this work is providing northern communities with necessary information to adapt to a changing marine ecosystem.