Kendall Island field trip-Sep 6-11, 2008

I just started teaching at Aurora College in the Natural Resources Technology Program. There are 7 students in the program and 2 instructors. The first course I'll be instructing is Water Resources, an introduction to fresh water ecology and resource use and conservation. What better way to start the new school year than with a field trip? We set off Sunday through the delta to a whaling camp on Kendall Island at the mouth of the Mackenzie River on the Beaufort Sea. The trip out was glorious. It was a beautiful day and the sun caused the hillsides to explode with fall colours. I haven't been out boating much in the delta so this landscape was all new to me.

The trip was about 5 hours through a maze of channels then to Mackenzie Bay. Our guide and host was a local Inuvialuit elder, James Rogers. We stayed at his camps on Kendall Island and in the delta an hour out of town in a sheltered channel. The objectives of the trip were to go out on the land with an elder, to work together as a team - oh, and to collect water and benthic samples from some coastal lakes and the bay to bring back to the lab for analysis.

Two boats of students and equipment travelled through the maze of delta channels following James. We had GPS's, but not James. His GPS was in his head. He's been travelling these channels his whole life and he can read the water because, of course, the channels and sand bars change. However, even old timers can get caught taking a wrong turn or misjudging the conditions.

Once we left the delta and headed across the bay to Kendall Island we were technically on the Beaufort Sea. The water was shallow - from 2-4 feet (NOT metres) and in some parts it's so shallow the sonar doesn't register depth. We actually ran aground far from shore and Darcy, the boat operator had to coax the boat off the sand bar. James knew where the deep channel lay. It was a zone only 8-10' wide in this wide bay. We followed him pretty closely after that.

We had an introduction to the geological and ecological setting of coastal tundra and collected our water and mud samples. But mostly, we experienced camp life and chores - lots of chores. Cooking, cleaning and stoking the woodstove were collective efforts. One of the students brought moose meat, someone else brought caribou and we enjoyed country food. We spent a day travelling back into the delta to cut up firewood for James' camp. We were north of the treeline and the logs lining the banks came down the Mackenzie, possibly from the Liard system at the BC -NWT border.

We stayed at James' coastal camp for a few nights, then moved to his delta camp for the last night. That evening the weather was calm and clear and I enjoyed a paddle on James' pond with one of the students. Some of the students stayed in the cabins at night, but I camped out in my tent. Time to get a winter bag!

This is going to be a great year. What a way to start it off! It's a little harder getting everyone into classroom mode, but once we get past some of the heavy theory we can get our hands dirty again.