Tag Archives: MPAs

Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

‘We’ll do it ourselves’: Weary of waiting on Ottawa, First Nation sets up marine protected area

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A First Nation in B.C. celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day by taking action where the federal government has not by establishing a new marine protected area in the Great Bear Coast. 

Kitasoo Xai’xais First Nation (KXFN) elected Chief Doug Neasloss and the nation’s hereditary chiefs formally and unilaterally announced the Gitdisdzu Lugyeks (Kitasu Bay) Marine Protected Area (MPA), a 33.5-square-kilometre ocean protection zone in their traditional territories near Laredo Sound, 500 kilometres north of Vancouver.

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Disaster

West coast expedition explores deep-sea habitat never seen before

Editor’s note: Vancouver Island’s last major earthquake was in January 1700 and measured +9 on the richter scale. Earthquakes of this magnitude occur roughly every 500 years (but could be as little as 200 years or as much as 1,000 years – Dr. Gerard Fryer, University of Hawaii). The largest local earthquake in more historic times only measured 7.3 and occurred in 1946. The epicentre was Cumberland, Union Bay and Courtenay, where 75% of the chimneys crumbled, but building swayed as far away as Vancouver. There were reports from Campbell River, Powell River and on Cortes, Quadra and Read Islands. 

By Melissa Renwick, Ha-Shilth-Sa, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Deep under the ocean’s surface off the west coast of Vancouver Island lies a mountain range of around 50 underwater volcanoes – measuring from 1,000 to 3,000 metres high. 

These seamounts, as they’re more accurately named, are the reason earthquakes and tsunamis threaten British Columbia’s coast, said Cherisse Du Preez, head of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s (DFO) deep-sea ecology program.

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Rivers & Oceans

Canada’s marine protected areas aren’t as safe as you think

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

As the globe’s “do or die” UN climate conference gets underway next week, Canada must scale up efforts to meet its ambitious ocean conservation targets to simultaneously prevent the wholesale collapse of marine biodiversity and tackle climate change, experts say.

As the largest ecosystem on Earth, the ocean is critical to regulating the climate and helping produce oxygen, rain, drinking water, and food, as well as sustaining livelihoods for three billion people.

An invaluable asset for mitigating the climate crisis, the ocean absorbs about 30 per cent of the carbon dioxide produced by humans while weathering an increasing number of marine heat waves, ocean acidification, oxygen and biodiversity loss, and pollution and plastics.

Continue reading Canada’s marine protected areas aren’t as safe as you think →