Category Archives: Rivers & Oceans

Rivers & Oceans

Ships to use AI to protect whales from underwater noise pollution

By Mina Kerr-Lazenby, North Shore News, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Marine researchers are diving into the world of artificial intelligence to help solve an invisible problem: noise pollution, and the effect it has on local marine life.

Non-profit organization Clear Seas is researching how machine learning can help reduce the noise emitted from ships, with the goal of creating an underwater vessel that will tune and adjust its noise to adapt to whatever marine mammal, especially in regards to whales, is nearby.

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Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

DFO raids seafood company, possibly over federal agency’s own paperwork error

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Federal fisheries officers descended in force to raid a sustainable seafood company in Vancouver Friday afternoon, seizing the catch of an Indigenous fish harvester and alleging it was illegally caught.

But enforcement officers are taking an unnecessary and heavy-handed approach to what seems to be a bureaucratic error caused at least in part by the Department of Fisheries’ (DFO) own licensing branch, said Sonia Strobel, CEO of Skipper Otto community-supported fishery. 

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Rivers & Oceans, Waste

Quadra Island’s ‘Dream Team Beach Clean-up’

Quadra Island’s 3-month-long beach clean-up finished over the weekend.

“Once a week, usually on Wednesdays, we would go on a remote beach hike,  to different areas on Quadra that were hard to access.  We had to go hiking for maybe an hour or so to some of these places and then collect and leave debris, and then we’d have to return by boat another day,” explained Nevil Hand, who organized the campaign.

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Rivers & Oceans

Fish fight over West Coast licences and quota resurfaces at federal committee

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A parliamentary committee investigating whether corporations and foreign owners have a stranglehold on Canadian fisheries is experiencing a serious case of deja vu. 

Witnesses speaking about the dire straits faced by commercial fish harvesters and coastal communities on the West Coast are raising the same issues first presented to the Standing Committee of Fisheries and Oceans (FOPO) starting in 2018. 

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Forests, Parks, Rivers & Oceans

Peeking into the world of the Quadra Island Outdoor Club

The Quadra Island Outdoor Club made 6 trips this month, and 3 of them were off-island. They came to Carrington Bay and Grandmother’s Grove on Cortes Island, kayaked on the Sayward canoe circuit and visited the petroglyphs on Maud Island. Closer to home, they’ve walked Hyacinth Bay at low tide, paddled around Gowlland Harbour to see the wild flowers and took part in a beach clean-up.    

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