Coats Island Nunavut
About the Field Site
The Coats Island (Akpatuurjuaq, ᐊᒃᐸᑑᕐᔪᐊᖅ) seabird research station, located in the northern Hudson Bay, Nunavut, was established in 1984 by the Canadian Wildlife Service. Its primary role is to monitor and research the thick-billed murre (Uria, lomvia), a cliff-nesting Arctic seabird. Approximately 30,000 breeding pairs of thick-billed murres return to the island each year from June to August to breed and raise a single chick. This long-term monitoring project makes the Coats Island murre colony one of the longest running and most continuously monitored seabird colonies in the Canadian Arctic.
Research
Our research on the island focuses on heat stress and energy expenditure in thick-billed murres during the breeding season. Using novel bio-logging and temperature-logging technologies, we study how rising Arctic temperatures affect these birds and their ability to cope with heat. As one of Canada’s southernmost thick-billed murre colonies, the population is particularly vulnerable to climate change due to their low heat tolerance. We aim to better predict how climate change may affect murres in the future, including more northern colonies.
