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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.
VIDEOS
Martial Glacier, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
TELUS Spark: Meet an Innovator Susan R. Eaton
Sedna Epic: Seawomen To Snorkel Northwest
SOCIAL MEDIA
It's another year of beautiful birds in our Audubon Photography Award winners. Have you seen them all? @people
The 2019 Audubon Photography Award Winners Offer Stunning Look at the World of Birds
The contest's winning photos include a sage-grouse bird battle and a shot of a bald eagle carrying a fox and a rabbit
people.com
Gobsmacked driving through western Washington State today: I chose the fastest route (Highway 2) from Spokane to Everett, but couldn't keep my eyes on the road... The 16-17 million-year-old Columbia River Basalts stretched in every direction #roadtrip #geology #GrandCouleeDam
ᐅᖃᐅᓯᓕᕆᔾᔪᑎᕗᑦ ᐅᓪᓗᒥ
Word of the day
ᐊᖅᑲᐅᒪᓂᖅ
aqqaumaniq:
Diving
(image: Pitaloosie Saila's Diving fish)
Starting tonight, one of D.C.’s most iconic landmarks will be transformed into a launching pad for the 363-foot rocket that first brought man to the moon. Find out more: https://t.co/y2le2UTTx6
Scientists @NAU @EcossNau pioneer a new way to track soil carbon in #permafrost in Alaska: In addition to carbon entering the atmosphere via greenhouse gases, dissolved waters in the soil carry #carbon into streams and rivers @NatureGeosci @victorleshyk https://t.co/YDLTW6PRGK
Ever the mineralogist! Did you know that #turquoise can form as stalactites and stalagmites in caves? Turquoise is often found in arid areas, filling or encrusting cavities and fractures in modified volcanic rocks #geology #minerals #mineralogist #GeologyPage @GeologyPage
First all-Indigenous-curated exhibition hits the Canadian Museum of History
First all-Indigenous-curated exhibition hits the Canadian Museum of History | CBC News
A new exhibit that explores the James Bay Cree's walking traditions is the first all-Indigenous curated exhibition to be shown at the Canadian Museum ...
ift.tt
Kiviuq following a lemming with his eyes shut....by Ningiukulu Teevee.
Tavvauna, exhibition of Cape Dorset drawings is online and at Studio22 now!
#capedorset #inuitdrawings #womenartists #kiviuq #legends #landscapes #kinngait
New research from Northern Arizona University shows even more carbon is being released from thawed permafrost than climate scientists previously thought.
César Plaza, Christina Schädel and Ted Schuur, professors in the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society - Ecoss, authored a paper published this month in Nature Geoscience that introduces a new way to track soil carbon in permafrost, which changes their understanding of how environmental change influences ecosystem carbon storage. The experiment builds on a long-term permafrost tundra warming study Schuur and other collaborators are doing in Alaska.
"This study was novel because we used new methods to directly track the soil carbon losses, and they were much higher than we previously thought," Schuur said.
"This suggests that not only is carbon being lost through greenhouse gases directly to the atmosphere but also dissolved in waters that flow through the soil and likely carried carbon into streams, leaves and rivers."
This study quantifies soil carbon in relation to a fixed ash content, which uses the mineral component of soil as a metric for pool comparisons over time, which enabled the team to get direct measurements of changes in soil carbon. They used this approach to directly measure soil carbon pool changes in a five-year period, showing an annual loss of more than 5 percent of soil carbon.
"Our results demonstrate the potential for repeated measurements that quantify changes in soil carbon across the entire permafrost region to better understand its environmental fate," the study reads. "An effort such as this is a critical and currently overlooked link to determine the magnitude of the terrestrial permafrost carbon to climate change."
phys.org/news/2019-07-scientists-carbon-permafrost-atmosphere-higher.html
On a warm summer morning in 2012, guides at a wilderness lodge near the mouth of the Seal River noticed thrashing in the water. Belugas were churning straight into shore. Soon the guides saw why: the dorsal fins of perhaps a dozen killer whales.
The attack lasted 75 minutes. The belugas porpoised, rapidly rising and submerging. They clumped together in the shallows. The killer whales nudged individual belugas out of the water and then seemed excited, behaviour the guides interpreted as a feeding frenzy.
As the climate warms, the belugas’ summer sanctuary is being exposed. Sea ice once limited killer whale access here, but the sea ice is melting. In Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait, between 10 and 20 per cent has disappeared per decade. Killer whales, once a rarity in Hudson Bay, are now spotted every summer.
By chance, scientists had just fitted six belugas in the attacked pod with satellite transmitters. The transmitters beamed back location data as the belugas fled northward up the coast, away from the attack site. In the subsequent days, they more than tripled their range, swimming farther and farther afield from their usual calving habitat.
