News

After almost a year away for the green, biology container, and a few rough months on the North Atlantic Ocean for the blue container, both are back home in Halifax, just waiting to see where the next trip takes them.

The green container has been out on the West Coast after taking its maiden voyage on the Canada C3 research cruise (read about our involvement with the C3 cruise HERE). The C3 cruise marked Canada’s 150^th year in 2017, travelling through all three of Canada’s Oceans over 150 days via the Northwest Passage, starting in Toronto, ON and ending in Victoria, BC. After this mission, the green container then wintered at Ocean Networks Canada at the University of Victoria in order to help support the research of PhD student Sebastian Haas in the summer of 2018. Sebastian, who travelled to Powell Lake in 2016 to study this unique body of water (Read about the 2016 trip HERE) decided to dive back into the ancient ocean water at the bottom of this fjord. Because Powell Lake, close to the town of Powell River, isn’t the most populated place, there was no lab space available to use. In 2016 this meant that a lot of experiments took place on either a tiny boat, the dock, or in Sebastian’s hotel room. So, the green container’s stay on the West Coast was perfect for Sebastian’s project. The container was shipped north from Vancouver to Powell Lake, to the parking lot of a restaurant near the water. They were able to hook up power to the container and do all of their experiments in this very unique lab space beside the lake. It ended up being quite the tourist attraction and even the mayor of Powell River came by to see it. After this trip to Powell Lake, the green container was finally able to come back to Dalhousie after almost a year away from home. Read more about the Powell Lake 2018 trip HERE.

In May and June of 2018 the blue container travelled to St. John’s, NFLD to join the R/V Maria S. Merian on the MSM74 cruise in the Labrador and Irminger Seas. This was the blue container’s sophomore mission after participating in the Celtic Explorer 2017 cruise (Read about this trip HERE). Again, this container proved incredibly useful as it meant that we were able to bring a number of instruments onboard that were not possible on other cruises (e.g. nutrient analyzer) as they cannot be dissasembled and shipped in boxes. It also meant that we did not have to try to fight for the limited lab space available onboard. The cruise ended in Reykjavik, Iceland so we flew home and waited for the container back in Halifax. Read more about the MSM74 cruise HERE.

Getting the containers back to Halifax is always bit of a fun. The green container actually travelled across Canada by road, while the blue container hopped back on another ocean liner, travelling by sea. Once the containers are back at Dalhousie, there is always some skilled backing up to get the flatbed of the truck into our container bay. Once inside, we are able to use the crane built into the container bay in the Steele Ocean Sciences building (the home of our group) to transfer the containers inside. Once the containers are settled we can then hook everything back up to power and water and can use them here like we did at sea. This also means that some instrumentation is used in the container regardless of whether it’s at sea or not. They not only provide extra space on a crowded ship, but they can be useful when the lab is crowded as well! All in all, our containers are a great feature that helps us improve our research capabilities on land and sea. We can’t wait to see what’s in store for them next time.