Chasing Arctic dreams: A conversation with Dr. Mark Mallory

Canadian Science Publishing is delighted to introduce Dr. Mark Mallory as the new Co-Editor-in-Chief of Arctic Science. Dr. Mallory joins Co-Editor-in-Chief Dr. Lisa Loseto in this role, succeeding Dr. Melissa Lafrenière, who will continue to support the journal as Consulting Editor.

Dr. Mallory is a Professor and Canada Research Chair at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, studying how climate change, pollution, and human activity impact coastal environments and seabirds in the Canadian Maritimes and Arctic. He’s also an active conservationist whose work led to the creation of national wildlife areas and helped bump ivory gulls up to endangered status. With over 370 scientific papers, leadership in over twenty-five Arctic research expeditions, and a book under his wing, Dr. Mallory brings a wealth of experience and expertise to his new role.

Dr. Mallory describes himself as “an environmental scientist… with a soft spot for birds,” and his love for ornithology has been a driving force throughout his career. Beyond his scientific achievements, Dr. Mallory is a man of many passions. When he’s not in the field or behind a desk, you might find him belting out Bruce Springsteen tunes or telling tales of Arctic research that could rival those of classic folk legends like Gord Lightfoot.

In this interview, Dr. Mallory discusses his career path, research interests, and the importance of collaboration and community outreach in understanding and addressing environmental challenges. He offers advice to aspiring Arctic scientists and early-career researchers interested in studying seabirds and coastal ecosystems. He also regales us with stories of working in remote Arctic locations, painting us a picture of jagged cliffs, endless skies, and the cacophony of nesting seabirds.

Join us in welcoming Dr. Mark Mallory to his new role as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Arctic Science.

On your website you note that, while some people might call you a seabird biologist or waterfowl biologist, you consider yourself “an environmental scientist with… a soft spot for birds.” I wonder if we could start by talking about your career path. What led you to a career in the environmental sciences and eventually to this role as co-Editor-in-Chief of Arctic Science? 

I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that! Growing up, I spent most of my time outdoors as my father had come from a farming background and he taught me hunting. I knew in high school I wanted to work somehow in environmental science. In the early 1980s, I caught a break when I found out that a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service needed to get computer punch cards for bird observations recoded (aging myself!), so at 16 I had my first contract with the government. A couple of years later, I got a summer position with Environment Canada under the then Career Oriented Summer Employment Program (now the Federal Student Work Experience Program) working on acid rain effects on loons and waterfowl, and I kept coming back, eventually as a contractor and then full-time employee, on that program for the next 15 years. When the opportunity came to open the Canadian Wildlife Service office in 1999 in Iqaluit, Nunavut, I got that job, moved my family north, and that’s when the Arctic dreams started. After 12 years living in Iqaluit and 20 years with Environment Canada, I moved to Acadia University as a Canada Research Chair in 2011. Since being at Acadia, my research in the Arctic has built on the mandate-driven government science I conducted previously. 

Your website includes an “Icelandic Limerick Saga” written by David Newland about your work—and more specifically about your love of birds. One stanza reads, “An indecent obsession with birds/ Defies all description in words/ A folly, a fashion/ Call it “Mallory’s Passion/ May yet be the death of some nerds.” How did this ornithological passion begin? 

Ha! My wife Carolyn and I have taken working vacations since 2007 on an Arctic expedition ship and we met David Newland and many other outstanding Canadians on those voyages. I continue to learn so much from the resource staff and passengers on each trip; they’re incredibly enriching experiences. 

I’m not sure why I became fixated on birds at a young age, but I’ve been into birds since I was about 10. I’m not a “twitcher” (someone with an indecent obsession with completing their list of species each year), but I’m fascinated with birds as migrating creatures, living in diverse environments each year, and with birds as an indicator of how ecosystems respond to all of the environmental insults we perpetrate. And, when you just want to wind down, there’s something very relaxing about watching a bird soaring or flapping by. Snakes slithering, fish staring blankly, or mice scampering just don’t do that for me!

Your lab works in some incredible research sites, from the Gannet Islands in Newfoundland to Nasaruvaalik Island and Prince Leopold Island in Nunavut. These are protected and often inaccessible areas that many Canadians don’t have the opportunity to visit. Could you describe what working in these remote landscapes is like, or perhaps offer a glimpse of a day in the life of an Arctic researcher?

Well, you are correct; those are truly incredible Canadian sites, like something right out of a wildlife documentary. While the Gannets and Prince Leopold Island are protected, there is technically no protection for Nasaruvaalik Island. There are huge similarities among them—fog, cool, damp weather, thousands of seabirds, and not a human sound to be heard except for the rare aircraft overhead. But on a daily basis, they are very different.

At the Gannet Islands, you have birds nesting all around you—mostly puffins but a variety of species. You kind of feel like you are always being watched. You need to be careful where you are walking because the ground is lousy with burrowing birds. The islands have quite a bit of relief—meaning that there are lots of nooks and crannies to hide in; when a polar bear is around, you have to be pretty careful as they can move among the six or so main islands and surprise you. Otherwise, everywhere you look, all of the time, birds are swirling about—murres, puffins, guillemots, razorbills, harlequin ducks, eiders, gulls. It is truly incredible to witness.

Nasaruuvalik Island is very flat and looks like a large gravel pile, except at each end where there is moss growing from the nutrients provided by the seabird colonies—terns, eiders, long-tailed ducks, Sabine’s gulls, Ross’s gulls. There are small polynyas (permanent areas of open water driven by tide, current, or wind) at each end of the island, so early in the season we have a lot of walruses around. There are two big challenges with that site: 1) the breeding season is during 24-hour daylight, so we have to cover the windows of the cabin at night if we want to sleep, and 2) we get a lot of polar bears, so people carry guns everywhere—between the cabins, when you get up from where you’re working to move a few metres to the next site, and even when you go to the bathroom. We are on high alert there all the time.  

Prince Leopold Island is the jewel in the crown of Canadian seabird colonies. The camp rests at the top of ~ 300 m cliffs, which fall straight into the ocean. Thousands of murres, kittiwakes, and fulmars make an incredibly beautiful racket on the cliffs through the breeding season and, on many days, you’ll watch beluga and narwhal swimming below you. We see bears there frequently, but they stay down on the ice or beach edge and don’t bother us up top. However, with climate change we seem to be seeing an acceleration of erosion on the cliffs, so climbing down to reach birds is not for the faint of heart, and we only have experienced climbers do this work. But from a historical perspective, on a clear night, you can sit on the edge of the cliffs, look across to Devon or Baffin or Cornwallis or Somerset islands from the crux of the Northwest Passage; indeed, you can look across to Beechey Island where John Franklin overwintered. Spectacular is an understatement.

You’ve had an extremely successful career with over 370 scientific papers, leadership in over twenty-five Arctic research expeditions, and a book (Birds of Nunavut). Your work has also led to the creation of Akpait and Qaqulluit National Wildlife Areas and the uplisting of ivory gulls to endangered status. What projects are you most proud of?

Well, first I would hearken back to an earlier question and point out that most of those successes are the result of teams of people, not just me. I often get the attention, which I guess goes a bit with being the principal investigator. However, I’ve been so incredibly fortunate to have many stellar mentors who helped me get to where I am now, a suite of wonderful colleagues who are keen to go out and play with me and just as keen to focus down and get the great science out into peer-review or policy, and finally, a gifted horde of students and post-docs who have come through the lab and brought their own spin to the party. So, I’m always a bit uncomfortable with the attention when I often just feel like the point person. As for the projects I’m most proud of, the absolute truth is that I don’t have one. There is so much work to be done in conservation, in the Arctic and elsewhere, that I view each project’s success as just a small stepping stone and then it’s onwards. I don’t take time to reflect or savour any of those—there’s always the next issue. Moreover, I tend to focus on the projects that I haven’t finished before thinking about the ones that were completed.

If asked what I am most proud of, however, that is indisputably my family. My wife and three kids are all smarter than me (i.e., I am the weakest link), all the kids have super partners, and we have six grandchildren who I try to train as bird biologists at just about every opportunity I can. Unfortunately, they seem to be more interested in Marvel characters or art (my wife is an artist).

With your recent promotion to a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Coastal Ecosystem Resilience and Connectivity, there seems to be a broader emphasis on social science in your work. How does your current research build upon your previous work, and what role does social science play in understanding and addressing environmental challenges in coastal ecosystems?

When I started my career working on acid rain in Ontario, we basically had zero connection with local communities, neither to learn what their priorities or perspectives were nor to share our results. Our communication efforts were directed towards other scientists and policymakers. However, as my career developed, and with my move to Nunavut in 1999, I realized the need to work with local communities to effectively learn about and address stressors to coastal ecosystems.

The Arctic is a very big place—you can’t do it all. Again, thinking of your earlier question, if you want your science to have an impact on policy, you need to work with people affected by the policy. Policies are rarely developed on science alone—there’s always a human angle, be it political or cultural or economic. That’s where the social science side of things comes in. For my lab, this primarily involves local (often Indigenous) ecological knowledge work. We are interested in two things: 1) what local communities want to share about their concerns over species X or environmental issue Y and how we can work together to address them; and 2) how we can develop monitoring systems with communities that give us data we need to track an environmental issue and simultaneously empowering them in local research. Recently, we’ve been undertaking various types of expert opinion work and some very cool-sounding “fuzzy cognitive mapping” in partnership with my academic and government colleagues. I feel like we are starting to have success in these areas, but I also stress that this is largely the result of that suite of collaborators I work with! It’s not just me and my lab.

You describe your non-avian passions as being your family, 1975-85 Bruce Springsteen albums, and classic folk music like Gord Lightfoot. I’m curious: has your love of music inspired or influenced your scientific work in any way—or vice versa?

The answer to this question is a very definite “yes.” My parents were in a band in Ottawa in the 1970s, so we had music all around us all the time, and when we went camping (Algonquin Park seemed like a second home to me) there was always singing as we paddled. We drove to the Yukon, to Cape Breton, and to British Columbia for summer vacations, stretching cassettes of our favourite singers along the way. I’ve always been attracted to remote locations, and I think that’s been driven by the imagery of the early music I listened to. (I’ll also add that while I once had a pretty good singing voice, not even my dogs want to listen to me now.)

What advice do you have for aspiring environmental scientists and young researchers interested in studying seabirds and coastal ecosystems, especially in challenging environments like the Arctic?

Well, there are a few things that I tell early career researchers—in no particular order. One, if you want to work in the Arctic, you need to come with some skills like first aid, outdoor experience (e.g., backwoods camping), a firearms license, ATV driving, and small engine repair. Previous cross-cultural experience can be a big one. These are the sort of attributes that will separate two students with similar academic backgrounds in the selection process.

Second, as a student, pound the (virtual) pavement looking for opportunities; some are advertised, but many are not. Find out who works in the Arctic across Canada (you can check various websites for this or check recent scientific papers) and contact them. They won’t know you if you don’t reach out.

Third, if you want to work in a tough location like the Arctic, keep an open mind and be adaptable. You can have the best-laid plans, but a bit of weather, a mechanical issue with transport, or a missed step with a permit can foil an entire season. Given how short the season is, unless you’re doing winter work you don’t get a second chance. Technology can fail, so you better have backup plans or know how to do some things “old school.” This is a huge reason why I suggest people do their best to get into an existing program or collaborate with an established researcher to learn the ropes and what to avoid.

Fourth, do your homework. Read about the history of a region, the science there, and what has been done elsewhere, and then talk to others to see how it might adapt to what you want to try.

Fifth, consult with nearby communities and see how you can engage individuals or the community in your work (and again, there’s loads of info on how to do this nowadays).

Finally, and somewhat unrelated to the rest, Arctic coastlines are usually harsh environments, so don’t go cheap on your clothing, especially footwear! I went through three pairs of relatively inexpensive hiking boots my first season on Devon Island, and after that never made the same mistake again!