Nearshore Marine Invertebrates of Western Jones Sound, Nunavut.

Invertebrate communities of the High Arctic marine waters of Canada have been little studied relative to the Beaufort Sea and subarctic marine areas. Current environmental issues in the arctic relating to climate change and concurrent pressures for extraction of non-renewable resources are shining a light on the need for a good database on baseline conditions in the marine areas of Arctic Canada. Prior to the Canadian Wildlife Service's Arctic Polynya Study (1980-1984) in the Hell Gate-Cardigan Strait polynya, very little work was done on the marine invertebrates of Jones Sound. This paper lists the invertebrates found by the author in the nearshore waters off the coast of the Colin Archer Peninsula, Devon Island in the summers of 1980-1984. 85 marine invertebrate species representing 62 families were collected in this study . Thirty-six percent of those species are new records for Jones Sound. Zoogeographic information of each taxa, as determined from the literature, is noted. For all brooding females collected of several taxa, the number of eggs or larvae are noted. Invertebrates were collected from a small watercraft (Zodiac) using a Clarke-Bumpus plankton tow (153-micron mesh net) for horizontal tows and hand-pulled plankton net (80-micron) for vertical tows; a Clutter drop net, Otter trawl and baited traps collected epifaunal and infaunal benthic invertebrates.