The adventure goes on …
Building a cabin in a remote location, even if the cabin is “prefabricated”, is not a simple task. As we start to build our cabin, I am reminded that this is the end, not the beginning, of a process that has been underway since the start of this year.
Pacific herring, small, silver-coloured fish, are the most abundant fish species in Canada’s Pacific coastal waters. About 500 linear kilometres of British Columbia’s coastline turn milky-white every March and April, as a result of the herring’s release of countless sperm around the eggs (roe) spawned on algal beds.
As a part of a project for Mavi Innovations Inc., Ocean Ecology developed an ocean circulation model for a region around Kaien Island. ROMS (Regional Ocean Modeling System) was chosen to carry out the ocean current studies. ROMS is a three-dimensional, free-surface, terrain-following numerical model that solves the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations (equations used to describe Newton’s Second Law of Motion in incompressible fluids) using the hydrostatic and Boussinesq assumptions. ROMS uses an orthogonal curvilinear coordinate system.
It’s been a long, hard week of hauling. First, we hauled all our furniture and belongings out of the hold of the Moody Blue and up to our sheds. Then, we took the Moody Blue and the Kipper’s Folly to Kelsey Bay to pick up the first half of our cabin materials.
Chatham Sound is situated in the northern part of British Columbia, located between Dundas and Stephens Islands and the Tsimpsean Peninsula near Prince Rupert and bordering on Alaska. It is a semi-enclosed basin with an area of approximately 1500 km2, and is influenced by fresh water from two large rivers, the Skeena and the Nass (Trites, 1956).
Generally situated in shallows and along complex shorelines highly valued by recreational users, eelgrass meadows are both ecologically valuable and potentially threatened. They provide rearing habitats for the juvenile stages of many species of fish, foraging habitats for both migratory and resident bird species, and recent research also suggests that eelgrass plays a critical role in carbon sequestration.
Continue reading “Chatham Sound Eelgrass Study, July to September, 2012”
It’s definitely been a summer for unusual events. Harmful algal blooms, often called HABs or red tides, have been one of these.
Autumn is upon us, the temperatures are cooler, and the rains have started to fall again. Along with the almost instantaneous sprouting of mushrooms throughout the woods, this wetter, cooler weather has brought another pleasant surprise – our creeks are starting to flow again.
Ocean circulation models are three-dimensional representations of the ocean which are used for studying ocean circulation, climate change, organism distribution and dispersal, marine chemistry, and the distribution and transport of substances in the ocean, including sediments and marine pollutants. These models include factors such as surface air temperature, water temperature and salinity, wind forcing, ocean eddies, and realistic coastline and seafloor features in their calculations. Numerical models can include real-time oceanographic data from ships and satellites to produce forecasts of oceanic conditions, including the El Niño in the Pacific, and the position of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic.
Hydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water on Earth. It encompasses both the hydrologic cycle and water resources. The discipline of hydrology includes the fields of hydrometeorology, surface hydrology, hydrogeology, drainage basin management, and water quality.