Experimental Lakes Area breathes new life into scientific research

A few minutes before lunch, Lee Hrenchuk is down by the beach, scraping mucous off a northern pike.

This is not some bleeding-edge culinary practice, as much as some chefs in Toronto probably wish it were.

Hrenchuk, a biologist at northwestern Ontario's Experimental Lakes Area, hopes chemical markers in the slime covering the species, affectionately known as "snot rockets" to local anglers, will yield a means of determining the health of fish.

ELA scientific research facility breathes new life

8 years ago

Duration 2:01

The Experimental Lakes Area, a sprawling outdoor laboratory where entire lakes are manipulated over the course of years, was slated for closure in 2012. No longer under federal management, it's back in fishy business.

Every year, tens of thousands of fishare killed in Canadasolely fortissue samples thatallow biologists tomonitor the effects of industrial pollutants on aquatic life. On the smallest and most remote lakes and rivers, this isnot a sustainable practice, even though the environmental monitoring is intendedto protect fish.

That led Vince Palace, an aquatic toxicologist at the institution officially known as ELA-IISD, to try to devisea non-lethal means of determining the health offreshwater fish. (The IISDstands for InternationalInstitute for Sustainable Development, the non-profit organization that runs the area.)

So on a glorious August day, his colleagueHrenchukhas anaesthetized anorthern pike, laid it out on a picnic table and is gatheringup a glob ofmucous in the hopes thisgoocontains enough biochemicalmarkers to allow scientists to determine whether fish aresuffering from stress.

"We know they produce these [chemicals] in their blood and they produce them in their body, and we want to see if we can use this simple method of taking mucous off their body as a way to see what those markers are without having to harm the fish," Hrenchuk says at her outdoor workstation by the beach at Boundary Lake.

"We have small lakes and small fish populations, so we're big proponents of non-lethal sampling methods."

This attempt to devise a non-lethal means of monitoring fish health is one of 11 largeresearch projects underway this year at the ELA, a sprawling outdoor laboratory where entire lakes are manipulatedover the course of years or even decades for the sakeof freshwater science.

Founded in 1968 by the federal government, the ELA encompasses hundreds of small lakes scattered about a sprawling rectangle of Crown land about 75 kilometres east of Kenora.

AlthoughELA scientistshave permission to conduct experimentson 58 of these lakes, theytypically manipulate onlythree to five in any given year.Other bodies of water serve as control lakes or are recovering from previous experiments.

But as recently as three years ago, there was next to no sciencetaking place at the ELA.

In 2012, the former Conservative government announced plans to shut down the field station and the research area, whichwas administered at the time by Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

• Budget cuts claim famed freshwater research facility

While the closure would have shaved about $2 million off the Fisheries and Oceans budget, it also would have triggered a cleanup job estimated at about $50 million. When the feds established the ELA, their initial deal with Ontario called for all the lakes within the area to be returned to their natural state.

The cleanup tab, however, didn't spark as much outrage in the scientific community as the proposed closure of the ELA itself. There's no other place on earth where scientists have permission to conduct whole-ecosystem research on lakes, and few other places where pristine fresh waterisaccessible to scientists but far from human impacts.

But they were even angrier because the five-decade track record at the ELA saw scientists quietly conducta series of groundbreaking research projectsinto the effects of industrial and household pollutants on fresh water.

In the 1980s, they proved the U.S. energy industry wrong by demonstrating the harmful effects of acid rain on underwater food chains, eventually leading to new emission standards for airborne pollutants.

How scraping mucous from a pike could keep other fish alive

8 years ago

Duration 3:54

The Experimental Lakes Area, a sprawling outdoor laboratory where entire lakes are manipulated over the course of years, was slated for closure in 2012. No longer under federal management, it's back in fishy business.

In the 2000s, they confirmed birth-control drugs can interfere with fish reproduction, which has implications for waste-water treatment. Theyalso demonstrated how quickly methylated mercury from the atmosphere winds up in lakes and the organisms that live within them.

The latter experiment, which saw ELA scientists add tiny but measurable amounts of mercury to one lake,was intended to establish the need for new emission controls for coal-firedpower plants, a major source of atmospheric mercury.

The 2012closure announcement halted all the science at the ELA except for basic measurements of the likes of water flows, chemistry and temperature, although even this data collection was reduced to once a month from twice a week, said Mike Paterson, the chief research scientist at ELA-IISD.

A planned experiment to test the environmental effects of nanosilver, the anti-microbial particles added to washing machines and underwear, was put off. Some senior research scientists retired, while others left for jobs with other facilities. Collaborating academics from universities around the world chose to conduct their own research elsewhere.

"It was devastating," Paterson recalls. "I strongly believe ELA provides someof the most important scientific research that's done anywhere on lakes and water quality. The idea of the loss of it, Icouldn't believe it.

"So we were desperately trying to find a way to save it, to keep it alive and encouragethe government to maintain thedataset so it would beunbroken for hopefully the many years ahead."

All of the researchproposals in the pipe had to stop because other people's money was on the table, Paterson explains.

"We couldn't assure any granting agencies that we would be around, there would be personnel to do the work. We didn't know what scientists we would have in the future if we managed to survive at all. So all of that stopped," he says.

While the pending closure was stressful, the publicized backlash made it worse. Paterson said in 2013, he needed permission from the deputy minister of Fisheries andOceans Canada just to visit theELAfield station.

"It was surreal," he says. "We were just this small group of scientists, doing work in the wilderness of northwest Ontario. All of a sudden we're on the front pages of the newspaper. All of a sudden DFO was paying attention to us in a way they [had] never done previously.

"Every move,every action, everythingwe did was being scrutinized. This was not somethingIanticipated when Igot into this career."

Paterson says he was never given an explanation for the proposed closure, though he says he doesn't believe the plan originated in the upper echelons of the formerConservative government, which reconsidered the idea.

After a year of talks,Ottawa transferred the ELA in 2014 to Ontario, which in turn transferred the research area to the Winnipeg-based International Institute for Sustainable Development, a non-profit think tank.

The transfer was in effect a merger, as ELA-IISDnow combines the practical research conducted at the ELA with the policy and communications work conducted by theIISD. The new management also conducts outreach and education programs, something Paterson says would have been impossible when ELA was a federal facility.

• Experimental Lakes Area to stay open with funding from Ontario, Manitoba

• Experimental Lakes Area research station officially saved

As part of the transfer deal, KathleenWynne's Liberalgovernment in Ontario now covers $2 million of theELA's $2.7-million annual budget. Fisheries and Oceans continues to provide $250,000 worth of funding, while private sources cover the remaining $450,000 tab, said Kathy Clark, publishing manager at ELA-IISD.

Funding issues aside, Paterson describes the transfer to IISD as a breath of fresh air. The ELA now has a full-time staff of 12, up from three people in 2013. When you include graduatestudents and visiting researchers, thereare anywhere from 20 to 60 people at the field station on any given day during the summer, which is close to historic levels.

As a result,ELA researchprojects that were forced to go on hiatus, such as the nanosilver experiment, have proceeded, while new experiments are in the works.

Paterson saysELA scientists have more freedom to conduct research now,under IISD management, than they did when Fisheries and Oceans was in control. Thefederal department was primarilyinterested in fish, he says.

"If you look historically at the research that has had the greatest impact here, a lot of it is related to issues around water quality and not necessarily including fish," he says. "We're no longer restricted by those Fisheries and Oceans mandates, so we can really do whatever research that can best help improve water quality in Canada and around the world."

As a result, the ELA expects to play a greater role in climate-change research, as the data collected from its lakes as well as at an Environment Canadaweather station perched on a hill above the field station represents one of the world's largecollectionsof baseline environmental data.

"This is one of the few places in the world to have that very detailed dataset for such an extensive period of time," says ELA-IISD research scientist Scott Higgins.

The ELA's continuous record of atmospheric, water flow and water chemistry measurements dates back to 1969 along with a parallel record of changes to organisms living within its lakes. That may prove useful to researchers around the world, Higgins said.

But much of the researchat the facility still involves fish.

On Lake 626 all the lakes are givennumbers, rather than names there's a project underwayto see how increasing water clarity affects trout, which typically thrive better in murkier water where the light and heat does not penetrate as deeply.

The ELA blasted a channel through Canadian Shieldrock todepriveLake 626 of its primary water source. Without new water, lakes become clearer and warmer because dissolved organic materials in the lake bleach in the sun.

There's also Hrenchuk and Palace's work with northern pike mucous. If they can successfully measure chemical markers in the slime, biologists could be able to determine whether fish are getting stressed out by pollutants well before those pollutants cause more noticeable physiological changes.

In other words, they hope the slime can serve as abiochemical canary in a coal mine.

"In any situationwhere you have an experiment or a stress on the environment,you don't necessarilystart to see populationsdying or fish gettingreallysmall. It's the subtle things that begin to show up first," Hrenchuk says.

The mucous-collectionprocedure has several steps. First, a student volunteer catches the pike, using a conventional rod and reel. The fish thengets a bath in a cooler filled with water andanaesthetic.

The pike is weighed, measured and implanted with a chip that allows it to be identified if it's ever caught again. Hrenchuk then collects the mucous, first by scraping it into a glob and then sucking it up with a plastic syringe.

"I like to think it's not that uncomfortable.They produce copious amounts of mucous. If you've ever caught one, you know there's slimedripping everywhere."

The chip-implanted pike then gets a recovery bath in a second cooler before Hrenchuk sets it loose off the beach at Boundary Lake.

"There's a school of perch out there. Maybe it will have a snack," she says.

She then heads for a lunch of her own, entirely free of mucous.