Canada Research Chair studying climate change and ecological health at the top of the world

It’s not only the lengths that assistant professor Emily Choy will go to for her students – it’s also the heights. 

At 9 a.m. on a sweltering Tuesday in late May, Choy and PhD student Flynn O’Dacre were at Rattlesnake Point in Milton.  They spent the entire day climbing and rappelling the park’s 24-metre high limestone cliffs on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment. Their instructor pushed them hard in preparation for the 120-metre cliffs waiting for them at Coats Island. 

That’s where Choy and O’Dacre will join PhD student Jolie Nguyen for fieldwork later this summer. They’ll be studying the impact of climate change on thick-billed murres that nest on the side of the cliffs. “Their calls sound like laughter so it feels like you’re being collectively laughed at by all of the birds,” says Choy. 

Doing important research while dangling off cliffs that plunge into Hudson Bay is a perfect day for Choy.  She has no fear of heights – “none whatsoever” and she says the views are spectacular and unforgettable.  

 “I’ve had 100 beluga whales – mothers and calves – swim directly below me,” says Choy who was last on the island in 2019 – COVID scrubbed trips in 2020 and 2021. 

For Choy, being out in the field and at the top of the world with graduate students is far and away the best part of her job. “I feel extremely privileged and honoured to work in the Arctic and with communities across the North.” 

Choy fell in love with fieldwork and the Arctic as a master’s student at the University of Ottawa.  She was part of a team that was studying the transfer of contaminants – mercury, PCBs and DDT – through the guano of a large seabird colony at Cape Vera on Devon Island in Nunavut.  

“I was amazed by the landscape and the wildlife, how remote and beautiful it was. It’s a place most Canadians will never get the opportunity to see.” The world’s largest uninhabited island is so desolate that NASA uses its polar desert as a stand-in for Mars to test equipment and train astronauts.   

Conditions were extreme and the climate was harsh but Choy loved every minute of it. The research team had pitched their camp near the den of an Arctic Fox and her nine kits. The cubs would wander over to the camp whenever their mother was off hunting for their next meal.  

The project came to an abrupt end when a blast of wind blew apart their camp. It was a bad day for the researchers but a good day for the fox who wasted no time scavenging supplies before the team could recover what had scattered to the wind. 

Choy returned to the Arctic as a PhD student with the University of Manitoba. She joined the history-making 2014 Victoria Strait Expedition that found the HMS Erebus and solved one of Canada’s greatest maritime mysteries.  In 1845, Sir John Franklin and a crew of 129 men left England on two ships for an ill-fated exploration of the Northwest Passage – the HMS Terror was found two years later in 2016. Choy says being a part of the expedition and travelling through the Northwest Passage remains one of the highlights of her experiences in the Arctic. 

Choy is ramping up her research in the Arctic after receiving a pair of major awards this year. She’s been named a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Climate Change and Ecological Health and is among the first cohort to receive early career research awards from the Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction and Response Network. The awards come three years after Choy joined the Department of Biology.

Her research program will examine the effects of climate change and additional anthropogenic stressors on wildlife and ecosystem health using seabirds and aerial insectivores as model organisms to predict forecasted climate change scenarios in Canada, and identify vulnerable wildlife and ecosystems that may be at-risk. 

That work won’t be easy – the weather’s unforgiving, the travel’s long and there are no Amazon deliveries for items that weren’t packed at home. “But working in the Arctic is such a rewarding experience – it more than makes up for whatever challenges will come our way. And I can’t wait to watch the students in my research group grow in confidence and hone their abilities and techniques.” 

O’Dacre was the first student to join Choy’s research group in 2023 – she just started her PhD in January. “Watching and learning from an expert who brings so much skill, expertise, knowledge and compassion to their research and fieldwork has been fantastic and inspirational,” O’Dacre says about her supervisor. 

And like Choy, O’Dacre’s fallen in love with the Arctic. “It’s an environment unlike any other, with so many science and research questions you can only answer there. Dr. Choy’s given me such an incredible opportunity to live and be in those questions.”