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Bringing the Ocean to Eye Level for Inuit in the Arctic
Bank to the left; bank to the right: Tethered to a diver propulsion vehicle, I flew through emerald-green arctic waters at six kilometres per hour, dodging sculpted ice formations off the northern coast of Labrador, Canada.
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.
VIDEOS
Martial Glacier, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
TELUS Spark: Meet an Innovator Susan R. Eaton
Sedna Epic: Seawomen To Snorkel Northwest
SOCIAL MEDIA
Geology Informs Biology: Excited to participate, as a travel & science writer, in the 2nd annual #GeologyWeek, July 1-5, at the #PurcellMountainLodge in British Columbia. There's still space available! #geotourism #exploreBC #unpluginBC #backcountrylodge @bcbackcountry @HelloBC
Sedna's #seawomen will celebrate #PADI Women's Dive Day on Saturday, July 20, in Seattle, WA, where engineers are creating life-enhancing designs to encourage marine #biodiversity #livingharbour #PikePlaceMarket @PADI @SeattleDiveTour @hakaimagazine
Fish Below Your Feet and Other Solutions for a Living Harbor | Hakai Magazine
In Seattle, Singapore, and other waterfront cities around the world, engineers are creating life-enhancing designs to encourage marine biodiversity.
www.hakaimagazine.com
Conservationists argue that arming #Zimbabwe's women rangers increases the threat of violence. Not so, says #Akashinga founder Damien Mander: “With the women, the rifle is more of a tool. With the men, it’s more of a toy" #SundayStills @NatGeoMag
Why Zimbabwe’s female rangers are better at stopping poaching
The Akashinga, or “brave ones,” survived abuse and exploitation. Now, armed and trained like special forces, they're protecting the countr...
on.natgeo.com
Behind netting, a polar bear dances at a circus in Russia. Performing polar bears are extremely rare, but at this show, four bears wear metal muzzles, performing tricks on the ice https://t.co/yijZjhCPts #NatGeoWildlifeTourism
Researchers @carnegiescience in Stanford, California, suggest that, for #seaanemones, the combined threat of #climatechange and #plasticpollution is worse than the sum of its parts #oceans #globalwarming @HannahThomasy @hakaimagazine
For Sea Anemones, Global Warming and Microplastics Have Teamed Up to Make Everything Worse | Hakai Magazine
Sea anemones affected by bleaching retain microplastics longer than healthy ones.
www.hakaimagazine.com
Mosquitos loved the colours of my #SANTIdiving hat! Photo captured at the Moravian Mission (abandoned in 1959) in Hebron, Labrador, during the @SednaEpic Dive & Snorkel Expedition to #Labrador & #Greenland #exploreNL @SednaEpic @arctickingdom @RCGS_SGRC @CanGeo @NLtweets
Explore: A @CanGeo Podcast - Episode 6: Don't miss hearing Sedna's advisor, colleague and friend Johnny Issaluk! He's an actor, #Inuit Games athlete, scuba diver, motivational speaker and the newest #ExplorerInResidence @RCGS_SGRC @OneOceanExp @issaluk https://t.co/GJUo16cWZE
We're delighted to introduce Dr. Megan Horowitz who is joining Sedna's women's 2019 leadership program and winter snorkel expedition with orcas and humpbacks in Norway's fjords, some 350 kilometres above the Arctic Circle.
Megan is a marine veterinarian with a longstanding interest in conservation medicine. She's always been infatuated with the natural world and knew she wanted to be a vet at five years old.
Prior to veterinary school, Megan pursued a bachelor of science in public health, with an emphasis in health promotion and disease prevention. Throughout veterinary school, her focus was directed towards exotic animals and wildlife, specifically the human, animal, and environmental health interface.
Megan is also a certified SSI divemaster, with extensive SCUBA diving experience in Southern and Central California, Hawaii, and Mexico. It was after her initial open water diver certification that her focus shifted to aquatic animal medicine and marine ecosystem health.
Megan has conducted fish and invertebrate surveys in the Swami’s Marine Protected Area, as well as organized and led dive trips with a focus on marine conservation and citizen science. She's trained in underwater search and recovery techniques and marine ecology, in order to conduct marine research and marine debris recovery. Megan hopes to utilize her background and skills to improve monitoring protocols for marine protected areas worldwide.
That’s pretty darn cool Megan! You’re so brave. Be careful out there! 😘
Congrats
“Global warming will release deeper smells and coax stories out of the permafrost. Who knows what memories lie deep in the ice?”
The Sedna Epic Expedition's Humanities scholar Dr. Kelly Bushnell has spent this week at the annual conference of the North American Society for Oceanic History, where she presented on the role of the humanities in climate change activism, beginning with this poignant epigraph from acclaimed Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq's 2018 novel Split Tooth.
The conference was hosted by the New Bedford Whaling Museum and New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, so Dr. B. also squeezed in a bit of research for her forthcoming work on the environmental and cultural history of Arctic whaling.
Brava!
Letters to Scotland sent by a woman from the small settlement of Victoria around 1850 gave Dianne Hinkley more insight into why the bones of her ancestors may be spread around the world.
One of the letters says that "skulls were all the rage" in the new community, Hinkley said.
"It was all the fashion that you had to have a skull on your mantel piece," Hinkley recalls the letter saying.
The woman's letter said she found the remains on rock piles that were all over the place and that she "would try to get them a couple of skulls, so they can have them in their house for fashion as well," Hinkley said.
Change in policy
Those rock piles were actually burial cairns and the pilfering is one of the many reasons why Hinkley has found Cowichan artifacts and remains from Russia to the United Kingdom and from Israel to South Africa.
That search has been helped with a repatriation grant from the Royal BC Museum, which recently changed its policies to no longer collect or study ancestral remains.
The museum has also announced that anything it acquired from Indigenous Peoples during the anti-potlatch years, from 1885 to 1951, will be considered eligible for repatriation because it was obtained at a time of duress.
During those years, the federal government banned potlatch ceremonies, which were important social events where valuable gifts were given to show generosity and status over rivals. The government saw the events as anti-Christian and a waste of personal property.
New B.C. museum policy highlights return of Indigenous remains, artifacts | CBC News
cbc.ca
The Royal B.C. Museum recently changed its policies to no longer collect or study ancestral remains. The museum also announced that anything it acquired from Indigenous Peoples from 1885 to 1951 will be considered eligible for repatriation.