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Katujjiqatigit / Working Together: The all-female Sedna Epic Expedition brings a changing ocean to eye level for coastal Inuit communities
Originally published in Water Canada Magazine.
BANK TO THE LEFT, bank to the right. Tethered to diver propulsion vehicles, the women flew through emerald-green waters at six kilometres per hour, dodging sculpted ice formations off the northern coast of Labrador. They soon discovered that snorkelling in pack ice is a contact sport. After several star-inducing head bumps, the team’s dive physician determined that helmets would be standard gear for future expeditions.
Susan R. Eaton
A geoscientist, journalist and explorer, Susan R. Eaton studies the interplay of plate tectonics, oceans, glaciers, climate and life in polar regions.
A Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, Susan explores the world’s oceans—from Antarctica to the Arctic—in the snorkel zone, a unique land-sea-ice-air interface where charismatic animals and snorkelers comingle.
In 2018, Ocean Geographic named Susan one of the “Ocean’s Best” 18 most influential women leaders in ocean conservation.
Twelve years ago, Susan suffered a scuba diving trauma that landed her in a hyperbaric chamber for three days, ending her 30-year diving career. Undaunted, her up-close-and-personal relationship with the ocean—which had included studying marine biology and teaching scuba diving—didn’t end in the hyperbaric chamber…
Redefining her relationship with the ocean, Susan has snorkeled with thousands of chatty belugas Hudson Bay and with docile manatees at Crystal River, Florida. She’s snorkeled in the Galapagos Archipelago where sea turtles, sea lions and nurse sharks outnumber snorkelers. In Haida Gwaii, she’s assisted the Haida Nation, snorkeling northern rivers to count salmon migrating to their ancestral spawning grounds. Susan has come face-to-mask with charging 1,400-pound leopard seals in the Southern Ocean—so close, in fact, that she could count the freckles on their upper palates and inspect their tri-serrated teeth which dispatch 30-pound penguins in mere minutes.
On Canada’s 150th birthday in 2017, Susan was honoured to be included in the book by Paulina Cameron, entitled “Canada 150 Women: Conversations with Leaders, Champions and Luminaries.”
In 2015, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society named Susan one of Canada’s top 100 modern-day explorers and trailblazers. A year later, the same organization named her one of Canada’s 25 greatest female explorers.
Sedna Epic Norway 2019: Women’s Leadership & Winter Snorkel
Please consider supporting a portion of my personal costs to lead the Sedna Epic Expedition’s women’s leadership program and winter snorkel expedition to Norway in November 2019.
Every donation is welcome and accretive to my bottom line.
Warm regards, Susan
VIDEOS
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SOCIAL MEDIA
Europe's vegetarian #cavebears were widespread until the last #IceAge reduced their plant-based food sources, fragmenting bear populations and making them susceptible to local extirpation by #prehistoric humans. #genome #DNA #climate @SciReports
Early humans drove cave bears to extinction, DNA study suggests
Europe’s vegetarian cave bears were driven to extinction by humans around 24,000 years ago, according to a new DNA study. There was a drast...
www.independent.co.uk
Excited to be the #KeynoteSpeaker at the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists' annual conference on Nov. 21: I'll present the @SednaEpic Expeditions to document disappearing sea ice in the #Arctic and our ocean knowledge sharing programs for #Inuit youth @AlbertaBiology
Ever the mineralogist! These aqua-blue #fluorite crystals formed in the cubic motif with perfect cleavage planes. Specimen from Poggio Balate, Termini Imerese, Palermo, Sicily, Italy; 6.3×4.7×4.9 cm; Photo © Viamineralia/e-rocks. com @GeologyPage #geologist #mineral #geologypage
A year ago today we (@sednaepic) explored Igaliqtuuq Bowhead Sanctuary. The whales were away, but the viz was incredible and sun was out so it was lovely to have a little while to just enjoy being together in a place so few people will ever have the privilege to experience.
ᐅᖃᐅᓯᓕᕆᔾᔪᑎᕗᑦ ᐅᓪᓗᒥ
Word of the day
ᐃᖃᓗᐃᑦ ᒪᔪᕋᓕᖅᑐᑦ
Iqaluit majuraliqtut
i-qa-lu-it ma-ju-ra-liq-tut:
The Char are going back up the river
(Image: Kenojuak Ashevak’s Luminous Char) @kenojuakcentre
14 August 🦄 On this day last year we (@sednaepic) explored Buchan Gulf, an isolated fjord on #Baffin Island #Nunavut. We snorkeled under 600m cliffs while around the bend in the fjord a pod of narwhals roughed around in a shallow gravel bay to slough off their dead skin.
Honoured and humbled: My @GoFundMe campaign to lead the @SednaEpic women's leadership program and #wintersnorkel expedition to Norway in Nov. 2019 just received a $500 donation from #GoFundMe via their #GivesBack program on #GivingTuesday #gratitude https://t.co/jWoIPr3Bb9
Europe’s vegetarian cave bears were driven to extinction by humans around 24,000 years ago, according to a new DNA study.
There was a drastic decline in their population starting around 40,000 years ago, the findings, published in Scientific Reports, suggest. This coincided with the spread of anatomically modern humans in Europe and pre-dated climate cooling.
“Our study supports a potential significant human role in the general extinction and local extirpation of the European cave bear and illuminates the fate of this megafauna species," the authors wrote.
Researchers led by Verena Schuenemann from the Universität Zürich and Herve Bocherens, from the University of Tübingen, reconstructed 59 cave bear mitochondrial genomes from bone. The samples were collected across 14 sites in Switzerland, Poland, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Serbia.
The team than compared these genomes to 64 previously published mitochondrial genomes to show where different populations of cave bears lived and how they migrated during the Late Pleistocene.
They identified five major mitochondrial DNA lineages that originated from a common ancestor around 451,000 years ago and spread across Europe – indicating cave bear distribution was more complex than previously thought.
Cave bear populations remained relatively stable until around 40,000 years ago, including during two cold periods and multiple cooling events, scientists estimate.
They say that as the cooling climate of the last ice age started much later – around 30,000 years ago – the findings suggest other factors, such as hunting by humans, may have had a major impact.
The study also sets out that the cooling climate and subsequent reduced availability of food from plants may have split the overall bear population into various sub-populations.
They would have inhabited more moderate climates with a rich supply of different plants.
By interrupting the connectivity between these sub-populations, humans may have played a decisive role in the species’ extinction, according to the study.
Early humans drove cave bears to extinction, DNA study suggests
Europe's cave bear populations remained stable until 40,000 years ago when humans arrivedWe are the most dangerous and weed species since ever.
We are the most dangerous and weed species since ever.
GREENLAND, THE ICE-COVERED semi-autonomous Danish territory straddling the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, is not for sale. That, at least, is the message recently clarified in a tweet by Greenland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, one that served the double purpose of describing the natural riches of the world's largest island.
“#Greenland is rich in valuable resources such as minerals, the purest water and ice, fish stocks, seafood, renewable energy and is a new frontier for adventure tourism,” begins the Ministry tweet.
“We’re open for business, not for sale.”
The message is in response to news reports Thursday that President Donald Trump has been floating the idea of purchasing the 800,000-square-mile island during meetings and with aides. It wouldn’t be the first spark of interest: U.S. officials reportedly attempted to purchase the island in 1946 shortly after World War II and just as the Cold War with the U.S.S.R. was beginning.
Strategically located in what is becoming a hotly-contested Arctic, Greenland is nonetheless not on the auction block. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweet concluded with multiple emojis depicting a snowflake, an ice-covered mountain, a water-blowing whale, a lobster, the red and white flag of Greenland, and a clear message.
I don't know about the US buying Greenland but I would fully support sending Trump there... permanently. Maybe they can place him in the centre of the ice cap and he can report on the climate change hoax.
YES Greenland - too beautiful and full of resources to let it be destroyed. My experiences and conversations with the people of this amazing country have shed light on resistance to being "owned" by anyone.
misdirect attention. That is all that is happening.
Throwback Thursday! Team Sedna models its uber-cool SANTI Diving expedition jackets and pants in late July at Apex, Nunavut.
SANTI has been the Sedna Epic Expedition's flagship sponsor since 2014, and has dressed Team Sedna and its advisers in arctic-rated dry suits with heated under suits and gloves.
SANTI "extends our limits," enabling us to dive and snorkel in the Arctic... Baffin Island, Labrador and Greenland...