Researcher Eric Collins stands on the deck of the Churchill Marine Observatory

CBC Manitoba: Research project at Churchill facility raises alarm about potential impact of oil spill in Arctic waters

July 13, 2025 —

A natural remedy that has previously helped counter oil spills will be too slow to “do any useful work” if there’s a spill in the Canadian Arctic, increasing chances of “catastrophic” harm, researchers say.

Preliminary findings from the GenIce II research team, led by Eric Collins from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, suggest oil-degrading microbes respond very slowly to oil-contaminated Arctic waters.

“We do see that it takes at least a few weeks or a month for the microbes to respond and actually start to break down the oil, and that’s just too long in the case of a real oil spill,” said Collins, who has a doctorate in biological oceanography and is a Canada Research Chair in Arctic Marine Microbial Ecosystem Services.

To read the entire article, please follow the link to CBC Manitoba.

Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment

New York Times: Is This Polar Bear Town Canada’s Key to the Arctic?

Ice has been shrinking in Hudson Bay, making it navigable to ships for about five months a year, or about one month more than in the 1980s, said Dr. Feiyue Wang, Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) at the Department of Environment and Geography and Centre for Earth Observation Science, University of Manitoba.

Cracking the code of Thwaites ice shelf’s disintegration

A new study led by researchers from the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Earth Observation Science provides the most detailed account yet of how the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf in West Antarctica has progressively disintegrated over the past two decades.