The Emerging Threat of Hypoxia on Canada’s Pacific Shelf
Several outlets covered the worrying declines in oxygen levels in Queen Charlotte Sound, a finding surfaced by a research team led by Hakai oceanographer and postdoctoral researcher Sam Stevens, along with Wiley Evans of Hakai Institute and researchers from the University of British Columbia, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the University of Victoria. The findings were covered by Canada’s National Observer, Business in Vancouver, the CBC, and in a CBC radio interview with Sam.
How Marine Heat Waves Reshape Ocean Food Webs and Slow Deep Sea Carbon Transport
Phys.org reports on new findings from an international group of collaborators, including Hakai Institute microbial oceanographer Colleen Kellogg. Published in Nature Communications, the research reveals that marine heat waves can have a knock-on effect, altering planktonic communities—the base of the ocean’s food web—and subsequently, the ocean’s carbon cycle. The work highlights the need for continuous, cooperative monitoring of the ocean to better understand and predict the ecological impacts of marine heat waves.
False Creek is Alive
Colleen Kellogg joined Hakai Institute affiliate Chris Harley (UBC) on an episode of Waterbodies, a podcast from the False Creek Friends Society. The two chatted about levels of biodiversity, how climate change and other factors are impacting False Creek, and the community science bioblitz that took place there in 2022. If you prefer video, you can watch the conversation—recorded in a floating tugboat studio—over on YouTube.
Hazard Risks to Pipelines: Opinion Piece by Dan Shugar
“Canada is a leader in oceanographic instrumentation and scientific monitoring, with organizations such as Ocean Networks Canada and the Hakai Institute as exemplars. Should a new pipeline to Kitimat or Prince Rupert be considered by the Major Projects Office, it behooves them to seriously consider the very real risk posed by landslide-triggered tsunamis,” writes Dan Shugar in The Globe and Mail. Shugar is the director of the Water, Sediment, Hazards, & Earth-surface Dynamics (waterSHED) Laboratory at the University of Calgary, where he is an associate professor.