Lab Diaries 3: Raw and LIVE from the Mingan Islands!

Found myself in a logistical inferno in one of the most beautiful places on earth: the Mingan Islands. Puffins screaming past sandstone monoliths showered by the mist of minkies and belugas. Drop your head into the water and behold the golden algal locks of mother ocean swaying in and around the confused jellyfish and ctenophore filled currents. An intense sense of calm and unspoken power about this place. John Himmelman and my professor Ladd Johnson have had teams working out here since the 1980s and jesus am I keen to keep some of that scientific tradition going.

But first let’s rewind to Tuesday. We were supposed to be heading out together with ecophysiologist and oceanographer Mark Patterson for our trip over to Anticosti but I guess Covid is still around! Nevertheless, he sent over some coastal security supplies (because safety is sexy) including an EPIRB beacon that’s hooked up to the International Cospas-Sarsat Program of satellites that can detect distress signals from anywhere in the world. Two wet screws and we’d have a helicopter over our heads in a flash. Probably not that fast. Sure scooting around the Mingan Islands shouldn’t be that bad but precautions never run amiss.

So Ladd and I were set to continue out to the Mingan Islands and then we find out that his daughter had covid. For a group of divers, breathing is pretty important. It follows that covid does not make a happy diver. So our one night sejour in the Mingan islands became a three day quarantine (don’t worry, the Covid incubation-contagious calculus was computed). No problem - this place was stunning. An auberge de jeunesse on the water with puffin-bike man Jacques (keen on showing us the raw and live footage of a whales stomach blowing up from the previous week), a sikh lawyer from Patna who gave me an autographed copy of his book 1984, an ayurveda obsessed mom-daughter duo (everyone is vatha pitha nowadays…), the context and community were set for a good time! Plus it gave us some time to mosey around the dying embers of Himelmann’s lab with the hope of reviving it for one last (or many last) hurrahs.

Nestled aggressively within the ominous auspices of the local poissonerie, this place was a piece of scientific treasure. One of those field labs where every artefact was at one point held by an eager scientist sharing a toothy grin with the world from coming up with this jugaad-ed way of testing out their ecological ideas. A rod of iron rebar, a PVC pipe with a windmill like mesh netting, concrete tablets one human face thick - all on display like an antique shop except useful and precious to one person and one person only: the sceintist setting up their experiment. Place was filled with dusty history of dives gone wrong, inside jokes offensively plastered to the outside, tender moments between field research teams stuck in rural areas. Also two boats. Epic. Gets me in my nostalgic centers, wouldn’t mind helping out bring back life into this baby.

And this was all before even entering the water! Thursday was as flat as a penny on a railroad track. Opened up the zodiac and Ladd dropped me off at a few select sites around Île du petit marteau, gros marteau, havre et goélands. Staggering snorkelling. A kelp paradise! Sachorhiza formed these herby fresh bright golden meadows that gave way to the accented stripes of Alaria’s midrib. I was mainly looking to see if there were any patterns I could observe as a result of ice movement from the winter past and man was it clear here. Some places looked easily protected with banks and banks of kelp beds while others looked absolutely smashed up by the rogue spring ice break-up. But then you also had an interesting summer dynamic between waves and urchins! Urchins combine the grazing power of cows with the unwanted infestation of cockroaches. A weird combo/something I wouldn’t want around if I was a yummy tasty little kelp salad! Wave exposed areas kept urchins away which meant super expansive kelp beds! Wave protected sites meant plenty more grazing took place. Poor kelp beds there. Some places were monocultures of the same kelp species, others were these splotchy mosaics of every shade of brown you could imagine (more than you think!). Felt like a forensic scientist looking at a crime scene piecing things together. I think I’ve figured out a few interesting experiments to run here!

Tomorrow, we get on the little 15 min flight out from HSP to Anticosti Island. There to help out a dive team working on kelp. Not many people get to go to this island where deer outnumber man by a couple orders of magnitude. Word has it that a tyrant chocolatier used to run the place with a cream-filled, lemon icing fist.