MEET POPPY, AN OIL SPILL-SNIFFING DOG AND A SCIENTIFIC TRAILBLAZER

Poppy, a six-year-old springer spaniel with floppy brown ears and a tail that seems to have a life of its own, is universally regarded as a very good dog.

Her white, brown-speckled nose has also earned her a place in history as a trailblazer.

In a groundbreaking study, Poppy accomplished something that has proven to be far more difficult for humans and machines: she successfully sniffed out an oil spill hidden beneath water and trapped under ice.

That’s the most remarkable part, according to Vince Palace, one of the scientists behind Poppy’s groundbreaking experiment in northern Ontario. “None of our current technologies can do that.”

While other studies have shown that dogs can detect oil trapped under snow and ice chips, this latest research goes a step further, Palace explained.

“This is the first time dogs have ever been used to detect oil submerged under water or trapped beneath ice,” he said.

For over a decade, dogs have been employed to sniff out oil spills in Canada, aiding efforts to clean up Nova Scotia’s shores after tanker oil spills and protecting vital watersheds in the Prairies from large pipeline leaks.

While promising, this practice has lacked solid scientific backing. That’s likely because contaminating a freshwater lake to test a dog’s ability to detect oil under water or ice is both illegal and highly discouraged.

However, in a small stretch of northwestern Ontario, such studies are encouraged.

“This kind of research only happens at the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s experimental lakes area,” said Palace, head research scientist at the IISD’s freshwater laboratory.

Founded in the late 1960s, the area comprises 58 small lakes near Kenora and is touted by the institute as the only site where scientists can manipulate real lakes to study human impacts on freshwater ecosystems.

Poppy’s first lake experiment took place in October. From the flat bow of a motorboat, she successfully located cooking pans coated in diluted bitumen submerged at depths of one, three, and five meters. Palace noted that her accuracy varied—sometimes pinpointing the exact location, while other times she was up to 100 meters off. The less accurate results were likely influenced by wind direction, though Palace still considered the results “very impressive” compared to other oil spill detection methods.

The next test came last week as a blast of Arctic air swept through northern Ontario.

For this experiment, Palace and his team drilled nine small holes in 14 inches of ice. They allowed the holes to freeze overnight, creating upside-down ice bowls. Oil was then pumped into three of the holes, while the rest remained empty. The oil, being lighter than water, remained trapped inside the holes and didn’t spread across the lake.

Freshwater ice, unlike sea ice, posed a greater challenge. Salty sea water forms briny channels through its ice layers, allowing smells to rise to the surface more easily.

“A lot of people didn’t think dogs would be capable of this,” said Ed Owens, an environmental consultant involved in the study.

Poppy, fully outfitted for the sub-zero conditions in an all-orange ensemble with a vest, leggings, booties, and goggles, zigzagged across the ice. When she detected oil, she sat down. If she was correct, her reward was playtime with “Wubba,” her favorite chew toy, said her trainer, Paul Bunker.

By the end of the test, Poppy had accurately located every oil-filled hole, with no false positives in the tests involving diesel and condensate, a light gas by-product mixed with thick bitumen to transport it through pipelines.

Palace called the results “extremely astounding.”

The team plans to publish their findings in a peer-reviewed academic journal.

For decades, researchers have struggled to find reliable ways to detect oil spills beneath Arctic ice, often with little success. David Dickins, an environmental consultant specializing in offshore oil exploration and a project partner, noted that oil-sniffing dogs provide a new, proven tool to overcome many of the limitations of technology-driven solutions, which often yield uncertain results.

Research into using dogs to detect oil spills has not always been well-received. Greenpeace, for instance, opposed a 2009 industry-backed study that tested dogs’ abilities to sniff out oil buried under snow and ice chips in a Norwegian fjord. Critics feared the results could be used as justification for risky Arctic drilling projects.

More than a decade later, U.S. President Donald Trump made Arctic drilling and fossil fuel expansion central to his agenda. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order aimed at boosting fossil fuel development in Alaska, aligning with the state governor’s request to open up drilling in the untouched Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

In response to the experimental lakes study, Greenpeace Canada’s spokesperson shared a photo of their “trusty canine companion” sitting in front of a sign that read, “No to oil spills.”

“This is like the old story of the dog who chases a car and doesn’t know what to do when he catches it,” Keith Stewart wrote in a statement. “The real challenge is that even if you can locate a spill in the Arctic, cleaning it up is nearly impossible due to the sheer vastness of the region.”

But Vince Palace, the scientist behind the study, emphasized that the findings had implications beyond the Arctic. The research was funded by the U.S. Coast Guard’s oil spill response division, and Palace noted that Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline, running beneath Lakes Michigan and Huron, crosses through the Straits of Mackinac.

“If there’s ever a breach of that pipeline in winter, some of that oil could end up trapped under the ice,” he said. “Being able to locate it and remove it before it sinks or contaminates sensitive shoreline ecosystems is crucial for effective spill remediation.”

Ed Owens, the environmental consultant who helped lead the study, was equally impressed by Poppy’s performance. Owens has played a pivotal role in cleaning up some of North America’s most significant oil spills, including the infamous Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

“I wish I had dogs like Poppy on Deepwater,” Owens said, reflecting on the challenges of oil spill surveys. “A huge part of the process is figuring out where the oil isn’t. After Deepwater, we dug around 10,000 pits looking for oil. In two-thirds of the surveyed area, there was nothing. That’s an enormous amount of resources spent just to confirm there’s no spill, while a dog could cover the same area in a fraction of the time.”

Dogs’ remarkable sense of smell is what sets them apart. Poppy, for instance, has millions more scent receptors and a significantly larger portion of her brain dedicated to processing smells than humans. Her nose can sniff continuously at a rate of five to ten times per second—an ability that has made dogs invaluable to humans.

Over the years, dogs have been trained to detect bombs, locate victims trapped in rubble after earthquakes, and even sniff out contaminated food. They can sense stress in humans and even detect changes in a diabetic person’s blood sugar levels.

Few people know how to tap into that olfactory power better than Poppy’s trainer, Paul Bunker.

“There’s nothing better than when your dog finds something, but it’s even more special when it’s the first time in the world that a dog has ever done that,” Bunker said, reflecting on the groundbreaking study at the experimental lakes.

Bunker made his name training dogs to detect landmines in the Balkans for the British military before moving to Texas to work with the U.S. military, expanding his work to detect improvised explosive devices (IEDs). His career took another turn when he met Owens, who had heard of promising results in Norway where dogs had been trained to track oil spills. Together, they formed a partnership.

Their first major collaboration took place in 2015 in Nova Scotia, where a 1970s-era tanker wreck, one of the largest oil spills on Canada’s East Coast, was still leaking oil. Not only did Bunker’s dogs find oil from the recent leak, but they also tracked down remnants of the original spill buried in the beach.

Their partnership continued in 2016 when a Husky oil pipeline ruptured, spilling hundreds of thousands of liters of oil into the North Saskatchewan River. Since then, Owens has used dogs on every spill he’s worked on, with few exceptions.

In 2017, Bunker launched his own dog training and consulting business, Chiron-K9, based in San Antonio. He’s selective about where he sends his trained dogs, ensuring that every conservation group or law enforcement agency he works with provides a loving home for the dog and keeps them “happy.”

For Bunker, Poppy is more than just a business partner.

“Poppy lives with me at home; she sleeps on the bed,” he said. “She’s not just a working dog; she’s part of the family. We spend a lot of time together, learning, growing, and enjoying each other’s company while we work.”