What does the ocean mean to you?
It was a common question during SOI’s first-ever Ocean Conservation expedition, and the answers from our participants ran the gamut.
For some, the ocean was home, history, discovery and inspiration. For others, it was a mother, a teacher and a classroom. It represented mystery and possibility, but also life, given its role in supporting the very ecosystem that sustains us, including every second breath we take.
One expedition participant said the ocean connects us, and ultimately, that was the key goal of this 22-day journey that ventured along the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia and through the Bay of Fundy.
We set off aboard the now Indigenous-owned vessel, MV Polar Prince, the same beloved icebreaker that carried us from coast to coast to coast on the historic Canada C3 expedition in 2017. Five years later, this Ocean Conservation expedition was a unique opportunity to connect diverse Canadians and organizations working on ocean issues, including ocean conservation, ocean literacy and a sustainable blue economy. Literally and figuratively, it provided a vessel for research and stewardship of coastal and marine environments, including marine protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures.
Bringing together over 100 diverse education and research participants, Indigenous community representatives, leaders, artists, industry, media, and youth, the goal of our expedition was to build partnerships, capacity and connection. Together, we hoped this mix of interests and perspectives would grow understanding, collect data, generate ideas, discussions, strategies, and help us answer some critical questions, such as – How can we collectively be better stewards and conserve the ocean? What does a sustainable blue economy in Canada look like? What is ocean literacy and why is it so important? Why do we continue to mistreat the ocean that we all clearly love?
“The value and the magic happens when you can connect the different stakeholders and foster those relationships and partnerships. We are leaving here as an inspired collective.”
– Geoff Green, SOI Founder and Expedition Leader
For Karel Allard, a marine protected areas coordinator with the Canadian Wildlife Service, the beauty of the journey was the ability to talk without time limits, rather than setting aside half an hour in Outlook.
“There is no end to it,” he says. “This expedition has opened many doors for opportunities and the conversations can continue any time.”
His colleague Doug Hynes, a protected areas technician, was pleasantly surprised by the diversity of participants, including the mix of students, as well as the diversity among research fields.
“It’s not just biological sciences,” he says. “It’s been really rich and immersive. There’s so many conversations on the go – you just dive right in.”
On board, researchers shared details about the work they did each day and how it related to marine conservation efforts. That sparked much discussion among the group about how to go about protecting these places.
Seabird observer Rick Ludkin, who spent a large part of the expedition set up on the bridge of the ship, said bird counts are normally a quiet, solo slog that involves getting up early and staying late.
“This has been a very different trip from that respect,” he says. “And how nice it was.”
Other participants regularly visited his observation station, wanting to know what he was looking at and more about the individual species. That would spark conversations about their work that he learned from.
“People wanted to talk about issues and ideas,” he says. “The level of interaction was pretty fantastic.”
Acadia University undergrad Brogan Regier, who was on the expedition to study kelp, was among the many Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth (18-25yrs) on board the expedition. She relished the opportunity to be part of the team and connect with the other participants given their range of expertise and research areas.
“Every day, I learnt more about subject areas I had never even really thought about before,” she said. “I think the more people who are working together towards the same goal with different perspectives and backgrounds, the better the solutions we can create.”
– Brogan Regier, Acadia University
And what better time to come together, as the ocean needs our attention more than ever. It’s the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, during which Canada has committed to protecting 30 percent of our ocean by 2030. In the next few months, Canada is hosting two very important global conferences, the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montreal, and the International Marine Protected Areas Conference (IMPAC5) in Vancouver. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate has recently detailed the effects of climate change on the ocean and cryosphere, as well as the associated impacts and risks for human societies, biodiversity, and ecosystems.
A healthy ocean means a healthy planet. We urgently have to get our act together by 2030, and we need to take that action now on many levels. Canada has aimed for nearer-term goals – preserving 25 percent of our land, ocean, river and lakes by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030. This would more than double the size of all Canada’s protected areas to date.
Protecting what sustains life on this planet after so many years of treating it poorly is no small task. But there is hope to be found in the love that so many have for water. As Geoff Green shared at the beginning of our journey, “Over the past 30 years leading expeditions from Pole to Pole, I’ve never met someone that does not want a healthy ocean, river or lake. This common ground is cause for hope.” This was evident among all our expedition participants, everyone we met in the coastal communities, and the distinct marine environments throughout this ecologically unique region.
Along the way, we learned there’s much more to the extraordinary Bay of Fundy than the world’s highest tides and its famous red cliffs. We witnessed the many wonders and experienced what makes this area so regionally and globally significant. We heard first-hand how important these waters and shorelines are culturally, ecologically and economically.
“The outer Bay of Fundy is one of the most diverse and productive places we have in Canada. It’s also one of the most rapidly changing in terms of the rising temperature and the effects of climate change, which are faster here than in 99% of the ocean. So we’re in the top one percentile. And this makes this area very special, almost like a laboratory to understand the effects of climate change on biodiversity, and what we can do to better protect it in the face of climate change.”
– Boris Worm, Marine Ecologist, Dalhousie University
There is so much we don’t know about this wondrous and mysterious underwater world. That’s why research is so critical to informing protection and conservation efforts. We have to know what’s there to protect and to identify ecological hotspots that need the most attention. That’s the work many of the scientists who joined the expedition were doing. Collecting data and samples on shore, on the ocean surface, and below from important and sensitive places that aren’t easily accessible help paint a picture of life in that area.
Thanks to the Polar Prince and our fleet of zodiacs, our expedition was able to reach even the most remote and challenging places. Lisa Doucette, a scientist with Nova Scotia’s Department of Resources and Renewables, tallied up the ground she and her colleagues were able to cover: six islands in three days which allowed them to collect eDNA samples from 17 locations and put out 16 cameras as they work to determine what species are living on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore Islands and if any are invasive to inform restoration efforts.
“In the last year, our team, Doug and Karel, we’ve only managed to get together to get out to four islands. So, getting to six in three days is a big push in comparison. And it brings our sample size up to 10. All the ones we hit were on our list for the last year and we couldn’t manage to get out to them. We’ve managed to tick off most of our list in three days! The SOI team found safe landing spots, got us there and back. It’s been fantastic for us to have this opportunity!”
– Lisa Doucette, Scientist, Nova Scotia’s Department of Resources and Renewables
Making it to Pearl Island, which is very tough to reach, was the cherry on top. The conditions were not at all favourable for going ashore. But, thanks to the incredible crew of the Polar Prince and our SOI expedition team, we were able to get our scientists there.
“It’s probably been 10 years since anyone from the Nova Scotia government or, as far as I’m aware, the federal government has set foot on that island,” Doucette says. “So, it was very exciting to go out there.”
She and her team photographed all the plants and collected eDNA and core sediment samples from the island’s one and only pond.
“Hopefully we’ll learn a lot more about this far-flung island and that it’s in good condition,” Doucette says. “Islands like this are very important because they tend to stay the most pristine, they’re the least likely to get pest animals.”
Given how far they are offshore, these islands also serve as important sanctuaries for migrating birds, providing a refuge for them.
Claire Goodwin, a research scientist at Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, along with Millie Mannering, a scientific diver and Australasian scholar with Rolex’s ‘Our World Underwater Scholarship Society, were able to collect upwards of 700 specimens from the underwater habitats across the Bay of Fundy and up the Nova Scotia coast, facilitated by the Ocean Conservation expedition’s floating platform.
“You’re normally land-based on an expedition, so while we can go to quite a few sites within an area, you wouldn’t normally be going to lots of different places like we are on this ship. This really facilitates getting around to a lot of these sites. It’s pretty amazing,”
– Claire Goodwin, Research Scientist, Hunstman Marine Science Centre
Back on board, her team was able to work to identify the marine invertebrate species (snails, starfish, worms, sponges) so they can sequence them to get a bit of their genetic material, known as a barcode. These are really short fragments of DNA that are unique to each species and can be used to identify them without using traditional taxonomy.
Goodwin’s project is trying to populate databases like the ‘Barcode of Life’ so that they’re more complete. The work is funded under a Fisheries and Oceans Canada program to create tools for monitoring marine protected areas.
From the time we set out from Mulgrave, Nova Scotia on September 7th to the time we wrapped up in Dartmouth on September 29th, we didn’t miss a single location we had hoped to visit on the expedition. Even Hurricane Fiona didn’t derail us, despite having to take shelter in Shelburne Harbour for two days to ride out the storm. Fiona did serve as a timely and stark reminder of the power of Mother Nature, and the pressing need for us to take climate change and climate adaptation seriously. Coastal communities across Canada must prepare for the increased severity of these storms combined with sea level rise. Conservation efforts along our shorelines are part of the solution to be more resilient to this ever-increasing threat.
“Nature plays a key role in protecting our coastal communities from the more frequent and severe storms we are seeing today. Salt marshes, coastal dune systems, barrier islands play a similar resilience role in Canada as coral reefs and mangrove forest play elsewhere. Restoring and conserving nature where nature protects us is foundational to any national climate adaptation strategy.”
– Craig Stewart, Vice President of Climate Change and Federal Issues, Insurance Bureau of Canada
Throughout the journey we were encouraged and inspired by the many diverse conservation successes we encountered including National Wildlife Areas, Marine Protected Areas, Provincial, and National Parks. We visited areas that are under protection thanks to groups like the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Nova Scotia Nature Trust, including the “100 Wild Islands”. The emergence of Indigenous Protected & Conserved Areas (IPCA’s) is also one of the most meaningful and crucial efforts happening across the country, and absolutely essential to reach or exceed our conservation targets this decade. We also learned how intertwined coastal communities and their livelihoods are to the ocean, and how these communities are critical to helping find sustainable solutions that work in both the short and long terms. If ‘ocean health’ equals ‘ocean wealth’ then surely conservation, cultural and commercial interests can be aligned.
The success of our expedition was in no small part thanks to the Miawpukek-Horizon crew aboard the Polar Prince, who did everything they could to help make this expedition a success. Who else would position a ship in the wind and 3-metre swells to make a lee so that our zodiacs could go in the water and get our team to Pearl Island?!
Proverbially, our ‘boat’ would not have been ‘afloat’ without the generous financial support of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. This kind of investment in supporting and connecting diverse groups working on ocean research, ocean literacy, ocean conservation, and the sustainable blue economy is critical as we work to restore ocean health and strive toward a sustainable future.
The many important partners that joined us were critical to making the expedition a very meaningful success. They are, in no particular order: Parks Canada, the Canadian Wildlife Service, the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, the Peskotomuhkati Nation, the Wolastoqey First Nation, ACAP Saint John, ECO Canada, Campobello Whale Rescue Team, the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and Renewables, the Port of Halifax, the Port of Saint John, Ulnooweg, Huntsman Marine Science Centre, Dalhousie University, Memorial University, Canada’s Ocean Supercluster, the Canadian Ocean Literacy Coalition, Canada Goose, Ocean Elders, the St. Andrew’s Biological Station, the Canadian Coast Guard, and the Canadian Museum of Nature. Together, with these partners, our expedition’s research, media, and outreach activities reached thousands of Canadians across the country and will continue to connect, motivate, and educate audiences in the weeks and months ahead.
“Together we achieved more than we hoped for. But this mission is only just beginning. The proof will be in the pudding when we see what the next steps are, when we see who does what. How does this act as a catalyst for the many different projects, initiatives, collaborations, and for raising awareness?”
– Geoff Green, SOI Founder and Expedition Leader
Now that we’ve successfully completed this pilot, we hope this will serve as a collaborative model for future expeditions along other parts of Canada’s coastline. Green agrees that it can and should be.
“Canada, with the longest coastline in the world, should be a leader in all these areas for ocean health and sustainability,” Green says. “Platforms like this inspire and facilitate research, education, conservation, innovation, reconciliation, and more. We need to break down the silos and lead by ambitious, bold and brave example. It is in everyone’s best interests. Our expedition has shown the value and promise when this happens. So onwards we must go.”