Jean-Pierre Desforges

JP's research is geared towards understanding the current health and physiology of beluga whales in the Beaufort Sea as it relates to vitamin and hormone dynamics. As an environmental toxicologist, he will investigate the effects and interactions of toxic contaminants and whale feeding ecology on vitamin A dynamics and circulating thyroid hormones. This research is important since beluga whales are high trophic level vertebrates and are thus vulnerable to the accumulation of relatively high concentrations of persistent and toxic contaminants, including PCBs and brominated flame retardants. In addition to health risks posed by exposure to contaminants, there is a potential disturbance in the food supply of beluga whales through a changing climate and altered sea ice dynamics. By collaborating with Inuvialuit hunters, this research is providing insight into exposure effects of contaminants in healthy free-ranging whales.

Jeannette Bedard

Jeannette is a physical oceanography PhD student at the University of Victoria and part of the Arctic Ocean Tracking Network project. Her current research will increase the understanding of the fluid dynamics within Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island, Nunavut, where the physical processes influence the local fish, bird and mammal habitats. Cumberland Sound's unique bathymetry, periods of ice cover and multiple freshwater sources all play a role in defining the physical properties of the water. Deep inner basins separated by shallower sills hint at unknown deep water renewal processes. Since so little is known about the physical oceanography in the sound, this project is an unique opportunity to explore this fascinating area for the first time.

Sean Mullan

Sean is an MSc student interested in applying geology, oceanography and seafloor-mapping technology to the physical characterization of high-energy marine environments that may eventually be exploited for renewable electricity generation. He is working under the direction of researchers at Natural Resources Canada's Pacific Geoscience Centre. His study area is a tidal-flow constriction in Boundary Passage, Gulf/San Juan Islands, British Columbia and Washington State. Between 2001 and 2011, the Canadian Hydrographic Service (Department of Fisheries and Oceans) conducted eight repeat multibeam sonar surveys of a field of giant submarine dunes in the Boundary Passage constriction. Sean is using the high-resolution bathymetric surfaces obtained by these surveys to quantify and understand interannual to decade-scale morphologic seafloor changes. Sean has conducted extensive seabed sediment grab-sampling (for grain-size analysis) and high-frequency seismic surveys (for shallow seabed characterization) in Boundary Passage. This bathymetric, geophysical and sedimentological data will be integrated with the outputs of a refined Department of Fisheries and Oceans tidal circulation model to describe the complex seafloor morphodynamics of the tidal constriction. The submarine dunes in Boundary Passage are up to 28 m high (among the largest ever surveyed). The migration of dunes and the erosion of seabed adjacent to the dune-field must be considered when engineering seabed installations such as pipelines, cables and in-stream tidal turbines.

Maéva Gauthier

Keen about ocean conservation, Maéva Gauthier is a M.Sc. student in Dr. S. Kim Juniper laboratory. She is currently working on the impact of trawling on deep-sea ecosystems off Vancouver Island. Using video and sonar data taken with ROPOS, a remotely operated vehicle, she wants to quantify the impact on the fauna. Maéva is also in the UVic Co-op program, currently working for NEPTUNE Canada, which will be the world's first regional-scale underwater ocean observatory. Lab web site: http://web.uvic.ca/~kjuniper/

Brendan Rideout

Current US and Canadian law provides a measure of protection to marine mammals from human-generated sound, such as that caused by underwater construction and oil exploration. However, the enforcement of these laws relies on the knowledge of where marine mammals are located underwater. My research aims at developing a way to locate and track underwater marine mammals using their calls. Most current localization and tracking methods rely on a collection of widely spaced underwater sound recorders. My thesis will focus on developing a method whereby the multipath acoustic arrivals at a single vertical array of hydrophones, in concert with data from a directional hydrophone, can be processed to give the range, depth, and bearing to a calling marine mammal. My supervisor is Dr. Stan Dosso, and my research is partially funded by the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Advanced Education.

Annie Bourbonnais

I study hydrothermal vents as an analog to the habitats where life originated. Vents are fissures in the earth's surface where geothermally heated fluids are released and re-mixed with sea water. The nitrogen cycle is mostly dependent on bacterial reactions and is not well known in these environments. Particularly, the reactions involving bioavailable (fixed) nitrogen are poorly documented despite the fact that nitrogen is a macronutrient essential to living organisms. During my Ph.D. I will study the nitrogen cycle and the related microbial community in hydrothermal vents using a combination of isotopic and molecular biology methods.

Roger Paulen

Thesis will document the surficial geology and glacial history of northwest Alberta. There is little documentation on the distribution of surface materials, their genetic history and relationship to the Laurentide Ice Sheet. To complete this research, field studies have been undertaken in northwest Alberta to create surficial maps of the region, to understand the complex glacial and deglacial history, including the intimate relationship between glacial lakes Peace and Hay and to characterize the physical and chemical properties of the till deposited by the Laurentide Ice Sheet to serve the needs of the energy, mineral and environment industries. This thesis is funded jointly between the Alberta Geological Survey and the Geological Survey of Canada.

Tom Dakin

The new Thermodynamic Equation Of State for seawater (TEOS-10) is based on absolute salinity instead of practical salinity. Presently there is no in-situ sensor capable of measuring absolute salinity. Real-time application of the TEOS-10 equation is therefore not possible. My PhD research will examine the use of acoustics to determine the in-situ density of seawater. The density can be used to calculate the absolute salinity and thus enable the real-time application of TEOS-10.