iBiome

Pacific Underwater: A winter's dive | Healthy Oceans | David Suzuki Foundation

This is the best time of year to be underwater in B.C. As more light reaches into depths free of phytoplankton and bull kelp, visibility is incredibly clear. Just a few feet beneath the surface, water temperature doesn't change much from summer to winter, so with proper diving gear there's nothing to worry about.

via www.davidsuzuki.org

Diving in winter here is fantastic, just a little clunky in a 6 ml wetsuit. And my blood has thinned I think and my diving tends to happen only when in the tropics these days.

today late afternoon on English Bay

Rising sea levels putting landmarks at risk

Vancouver is at risk of losing landmark communities like Granville Island and False Creek unless the city starts taking measures to defend its shoreline against rising sea levels, an urban planner warns.

Andrew Yan, a planner and researcher with Bing Thom Architects, estimates the city will have to spend upwards of $510 million to build and upgrade the dikes and seawalls - plus billions more to buy the land to put them on - over the next century.

"What's under threat in Vancouver is a lot of our identity; our beaches, our seawall ... this is what makes Vancouver such a livable place," Yan said. "We just need to look at Granville Island and its exposure to sea level rise and what may be required to defend it."

Vancouver isn't the only city under threat.

Richmond's Steveston, which has experienced huge residential growth along its waterfront in recent years, will face significant pressures in the future, Yan said, while south Surrey's Crescent Beach is already being threatened by a more insidious force: increasing groundwater from rising ocean tides.

"It affects every municipality that touches the water," Yan said. "Sea level rise isn't going to separate itself from the boundaries of Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond or Surrey. We'd better be serious about this. It's important to plan now as opposed to 50 or 70 years from now."

........

The report illustrated a number of sea level rise scenarios, from one to six metres, which could affect between three and 13 per cent of the city's land mass. For instance, sea level rise at the three-metre interval, combined with a severe storm in 2100, would affect most of the city's shoreline, including the harbour, the southern edge of the city and Granville Island.

And it gets worse: At the four-metre interval, False Creek would revert to its 19th-century boundaries, while Gastown, Chinatown and the harbour would be heavily affected. And at five-and six-metre intervals, the report warns, downtown Vancouver would become an archipelago and the city's coast-line would be "unrecognizable" compared to today's.

via www.vancouversun.com

Salmon Genome in Final Phases of Completion

The International Cooperation to Sequence the Atlantic Salmon Genome (ICSASG, the "Cooperation") has awarded the Phase II contract for next-generation sequencing and analysis of the Atlantic salmon genome to the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rockville, Maryland. The JCVI will be sequencing the salmon genome using next-generation technologies, including assembly to integrate Sanger and next-generation sequence, and comparative genomics. This effort is expected to generate a high-quality resource for those responsible for the management of wild salmon stocks and the salmon aquaculture industry, as well as providing a reference genome for work with other salmonids.

via www.bioportfolio.com

Great to see the Venter Institute involved in this next stage of genomic resource development for salmon. This will work feed environmental genomics, aquaculture, and our understanding of the role of gene duplication in evolution. Exciting!

science and the salmon debate

Tony Farrell schools us on the perils of simplification and media in public debates over scientific questions.  The mysteries of the Fraser River Sockeye, and more broadly the health of pacific salmon, are as heated as they are cryptic, and you need to spend just a little time with scientists in the field to learn that we don't know what the hell is going on with salmon, particularly in the open ocean.  Dr. Farrell:

Scientists routinely agree to disagree, but that doesn't sit well with society-at-large, which increasingly demands instant answers and quick solutions.

Nowhere is this more painfully apparent than in the debate and confusion around the future of salmon in British Columbia, which is the current topic of an expensive federal inquiry, the Cohen Commission.

The problem is that we expect too much, too soon from science. The announcement of an "overnight" discovery is always backed by an awful lot of scientific discovery and testing.

While responsible scientists couch their discoveries with words like could, may and might, prudent caution too often gets lost in translation.

.....

Yet, the public, which is clearly selective in its risk tolerance, demands absolutes from the media when confronted with questions about natural phenomena like salmon.

As Malcolm Gladwell writes in What the Dog Saw: "Rarely is there a clear story - at least, not until afterward, when some enterprising journalists or investigative committee decides to write one."

Have your headlines if you must, because in this fast-paced world we can't always wait for hindsight, but can we agree to not represent hypotheses - no matter how intriguing - as facts?

a large day

Looking west from the tower at the Reifel Bird Sanctuary last week, before ice and snow began to maul Vancouver. 

Mount Milligan forges ahead, Prosperity proposal looks for lifeline

I suppose I should note my tiny contribution to the Prosperity discussion. I got a call from the Vancouver Sun to provide some background on federal and provincial environmental assessment.  I've not worked on the project at all, so can't contribute anything meaningful about the actual decision, but I think it's worth discussing the reality vs. perception when it comes to the process. 

"The feds and the province do their best to work together, and spend a lot of time working together, but they have different mandates and constitutional responsibilities," Brian Yates, of the environmental consulting firm Hemmera, said in an interview.

The federal Fisheries Act, for instance, makes the federal government responsible for maintaining fish habitat.

And while the federal review may look at socio-economic factors in a review, Yates said the province takes a stronger look at those.

via www.vancouversun.com

Both reviews are robust in their own way, but reflect their differing priorities, mandates, and expertise.  It's interesting how 10 minutes of discussion gets reduced to a snippet quote. And it's relatively accurate. 

a large day

snow, sunshine and a nearly empty mountain, last week on Blackcomb.  The lull between Olympics and Paralympics made for a perfect march break getaway.  I can highly recommend the Woodrun Lodge.  Ski in ski out; pool and hot tub; and generously large family condos. 

we are more

Easily one of my favourite segments from last night's opening ceremony was Shane Koyczan's poem, we are more.  Found a YouTube of him a few years ago.

And the text:

“We Are More” by Shane Koyczan

When defining Canada
you might list some statistics
you might mention our tallest building
or biggest lake
you might shake a tree in the fall
and call a red leaf Canada
you might rattle off some celebrities
might mention Buffy Sainte-Marie
might even mention the fact that we’ve got a few
Barenaked Ladies
or that we made these crazy things
like zippers
electric cars
and washing machines
when defining Canada
it seems the world’s anthem has been
” been there done that”
and maybe that’s where we used to be at
it’s true
we’ve done and we’ve been
we’ve seen
all the great themes get swallowed up by the machine
and turned into theme parks
but when defining Canada
don’t forget to mention that we have set sparks

we are not just fishing stories
about the one that got away
we do more than sit around and say “eh?”
and yes

we are the home of the Rocket and the Great One
who inspired little number nines
and little number ninety-nines
but we’re more than just hockey and fishing lines
off of the rocky coast of the Maritimes
and some say what defines us
is something as simple as please and thank you
and as for you’re welcome
well we say that too
but we are more
than genteel or civilized
we are an idea in the process
of being realized
we are young
we are cultures strung together
then woven into a tapestry
and the design
is what makes us more
than the sum total of our history
we are an experiment going right for a change
with influences that range from a to zed
and yes we say zed instead of zee
we are the colours of Chinatown and the coffee of Little Italy
we dream so big that there are those
who would call our ambition an industry
because we are more than sticky maple syrup and clean snow
we do more than grow wheat and brew beer
we are vineyards of good year after good year
we reforest what we clear
because we believe in generations beyond our own
knowing now that so many of us
have grown past what used to be
we can stand here today

why we live here