MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Spring 2020

54 “Must be able to work in the presence of biting insects.” This could be the first line of any Ontario outdoor summer job description. Yet, hanging over the side of a canoe in a shallow, marshy bay of a remote lake north of Sudbury, elbow-deep in tar-black organic lake bottom detritus, this job description rang particularly true. Swatting the cloud of mosquitoes and blackflies crawling up my shorts and down my shirt wasn’t an option. This lake-bottom muck was part of an important study. And my dream summer job. My University of Ottawa Geography degree required I find a summer job in my field. Determined to find a co-op placement that entailed minimal screen time and maximum fresh air, I applied for a position as an Acid Rain Biomonitoring Technician for the Canadian Wildlife Survey (CWS). It was a job that combined science and my field of study with hard physical labour. It required the use of maps and navigation to contribute to an ongoing study, ultimately monitoring the resilience of nature. Bushwhacking through the forest with a canoe on my shoulders and sampling equipment bouncing on my backpack, I felt more like pack mule than a scientist, but it was exciting and rewarding to be a part of a 30-year-long Environment Canada study on the recovery of lake systems acidified by emissions from Sudbury’s nickel and copper operations. Each day in the field started with a big breakfast in our small log cabin before loading up ATVs equipped with canoes on custom-made overhead racks that looked as if they were plucked out of Jurassic Park. Bumping along rocky, muddy or swampy trails, our four- person team stopped only when we neared a sampling location. Close was a relative term, and we sometimes bushwhacked for multiple kilometres to arrive at a lake. Each team carried a canoe and heaps of sampling gear, including fish traps, Secchi disk, bottles, bags and containers. At the lake, we paddled to multiple predetermined locations where we were trusted with basic sampling: drawing benthic samples and measuring water temperature, depth and visibility, plus baiting and placing fish traps. Arriving home at dusk, two people took on dinner prep, while the other two donned headlamps (and bug nets) and began processing the day’s samples, depositing fish, leeches and macroinvertebrates into various ethanol-based preservatives to be analyzed back in Ottawa. After dinner and a beer or two, we didn’t even need the sounds of loons or peepers to lull us to sleep. After 38 days of field work, the remainder of that very hot summer was spent in a small, poorly ventilated lab, where my co-worker and I picked through hundreds of litres of benthic samples—decaying leaves, sticks, sand and mud from the bottom of the lake. We counted each blackfly, midge and mosquito larvae, nematode, amphipod, chironomid and fingernail clam; the highlight of the day was being startled by the discovery of a menacing-looking dragonfly nymph under the microscope. We relived the stories and suffering of the field, missing the simplicity of a job in the wilderness. But we didn’t miss waking up looking like we had a black eye and wisdom teeth pulled, from the number of blackfly bites to our faces. –Carmen Kuntz We relived the stories and suffering of the field, missing the simplicity of a job in the wilderness. Benthic Bonanza: Acid Rain Biomonitor