Amadjuak Lake

The south of the Arctic circle on Baffin Island Amadjuak Lake is 3115 km ² area, more than 80 km long and 45 km wide, the third largest freshwater lake in the Canadian territory of Nunavut.

The lake is known for a special feature in the Arctic - 30 m high, washed by the sea waves, it superior limestone cliffs that fall away from the surrounding plain. Of them, the lake has probably also his name: Angmaakjuak how the Inuit call it, means " large flint ".

The lake is located 113 m above sea level. inst 75 km north-east of Hudson Strait and 125 km north- west of Iqaluit on the edge of the Great Plain of Koukdjuak and, together with the largest lake of Baffin Island, the Nett Illing Lake into which it flows northward through the Amadjuak River, and the him south appended Mingo Lake and a number of smaller streams, ponds and river congestion a vast lake area, which eventually pours over the narrow Koukdjuak River in the Foxe Basin.

The first settlement of the level of Koukdjuak took place more than 4000 years ago. Between 1924 and 1926, Joseph Dewey Soper ( 1893-1982 ) held on as a government officer in the Lake District and explored the region from the Hudson Strait to the Nett Lake Illing. Because of the caribou and fish wealth here had many Inuit their camps. For about five decades, the area is, however, no longer permanently inhabited; the Inuit now live in the settlements Cape Dorset and Kimmirut and are only in their spare time for hunting and fishing to the Amadjuak Lake.

As in Nett Lake Illing come in Amadjuak lake three species of fish: Arctic char ( Salvelinus alpinus ), nine-spined stickleback ( Pungitius pungitius ) and three-spined stickleback ( Gasterosteus aculeatus ).

The tundra around the entire lake area is used as a feeding ground caribou calving and region. Here in the spring and early summer months developing the most comprehensive Caribou concentration of the Canadian Archipelago, and the main trail leads these animals in spring and fall past the Amadjuak Lake.