IQALUIT - Scientists with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans aren working with the Amarok Hunters and Trappers Association to collect data on Arctic char in the Iqaluit area.

Fisheries technician Rory MacDonald and Amarok Hunters and Trappers employee Matthewsie Peters catch, measure and tag char along the Sylvia Grinnell River near Iqaluit on Aug. 11. - photo courtesy of Chris Lewis, Department of Fisheries and Oceans

Scientists and two HTA employees have been netting, tagging and throwing back fish from the Sylvia Grinnell River and other sites around the city. By the end of the month, DFO biologist Chris Lewis hopes to have around 1,000 fish marked with tags.

The tags each have a number on them, and the researchers record where and when the fish was caught along with information such as the fish's size and weight at the time.

The tag is placed behind the fish's dorsal fin, facing the rear of the fish so it doesn't interfere with its swimming.

Over the next three years scientists will be catching fish up and down the Sylvia Grinnell and Burton rivers and other locations around the inner part of Frobisher Bay. By retrieving the tagged fish, they hope to be able to eventually generate a picture of how far the char travel over the course of their yearly migrations.

Lewis hopes in the winter he and the HTA can catch some fish out of the larger parts of the lakes nearby.

Iqalummiut may end up catching tagged fish, so the tags have a phone number on them for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Lewis said if someone calls having caught a tagged fish, the department would ask where and when it was caught so that information can be included in the research analysis.

The tags are small so there wasn't enough room to include information in Inuktitut, but there are bilingual staff at the fisheries office in Iqaluit who can take the information from unilingual fishermen who call in.

The char of the Iqaluit area have been studied since 1948 and a lot is known about them, but not their population size, Lewis said. This is the first time a tag-and-release study has been done on the population.