Scientists search for climate change answers in Quebec sea floor

Tiny creatures in Quebec's Saguenay fjord mud may play key role in fighting climate change, scientists say, as they search the sea floor for answers.

Far below the seals and belugas that dive gracefully through Quebec’s Saguenay fiord, there are small creatures burrowing in the sea floor mud that scientists believe play a crucial role in mitigating the effects of climate change.

Earlier this month, scientists from the United Kingdom and Université Laval spent several days on the fiord’s bumpy waters, grabbing samples from 200 metres below in a quest to track the life in the mud.

Dr. Adam Porter, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Exeter, said the sea can look like an “impenetrable blue” for those on the surface.

“I think mud is even more impenetrable because you get down to the bottom, you look at the sea floor, it can often look like there’s not much going on,” he said in a video interview. “But there’s this whole world of life under the mud, and that is playing a really important role in keeping the planet healthy.”

The research is part of the Convex Seascape Survey, a partnership exploring how the sea floor regulates climate through the sequestration of carbon, and the role that small animals in the mud play in keeping the planet healthy, Porter said.

Unofficially, he said the study has another title: “Trying to make mud sexy.”

Rebecca Howman, a PhD student at Université Laval, said collecting the roughly 60 sea floor samples was complicated by the Saguenay fiord’s tides, waves and current.

“You have to literally take a chunk of the floor off the ground, and considering that the Saguenay is 200 metres deep, that’s quite a feat,” she said in an interview. From the boat, the scientists used what she describes as a “big claw” to scoop samples, which were transferred to aquariums the scientists could use to study and experiment.