Observing the ocean

A boat brings a group of high school students to see weather buoys in Lunenburg Bay. (Pearce photo)

Field trips are fun wherever your teacher decides to take you, but Stevenson Lawrence figures his class has hit the jackpot with its leisurely cruise of Lunenburg Bay. As the boat putt-putts back into dock behind the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic, the teenager is just getting revved up.

“I think it’s amazing – look what technology is telling us,” says the student from New Germany Rural High School, who throws in a few “awesomes” and “phenomenals” when approached by a Global TV reporter. 

“I do, I think it’s cool. You can be anywhere in the world and you can find out the water temperature, the air pressure, the wind speed, whatever, for a spot right by here. And all from buoys powered by the sun.” 

On Friday, scientists with the Centre for Marine Environmental Prediction (CMEP) held an open house at the Lunenburg museum to explain what they’ve been up to for the past five years. There were boat tours to see the meteorological instrumentation out at sea and booths explaining the scientific concepts under a tent dockside.

About 500 school children attended, as well as many local residents curious about the strange-looking yellow buoys bopping around Lunenburg Bay. There are three of them out there, collecting data on air temperature, wind speed, wind direction, humidity, salinity, bottom pressure and bottom temperature. Outfitted with solar panels, the buoys collect information which is transmitted by radio antennas to Dalhousie University and posted directly to CMEP’s web site.

John Cullen is the Killam Chair in Ocean Studies at Dalhousie University and co-investigator of the Centre for Marine Environmental Protection. (Pearce photo)

Out on the boat, oceanographer Richard Davis bellows over the motor to students who have their faces framed by rigid orange life jackets: “All the really cool stuff is beneath the water,” he says as the boat approaches the first buoy. There are monitors onboard to show what’s going on beneath the waves, and he points out a lumpfish that has been keeping company with the acoustic pod on the ocean bottom all day.

Mr. Davis, a former project manager for CMEP, explains the project is in limbo, nearing the end of its five-year mandate with no indication from the federal government if it will be renewed or not. But in five years, they’ve learned a lot, he says, and have been able to develop a forecasting ability for ocean weather by studying the links between weather and ocean processes. This kind of information can be used to predict if a storm surge is coming, for example, if the water’s too cold for lobster fishermen to put out their traps, or if it’s too choppy or foggy out at sea for whale watching.

But while scientists are able to provide 24-hour and 48-hour forecasts of ocean weather with some accuracy, they’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to understanding how the ocean is responding to long-term climate change. That science is in its infancy, says John Cullen, co-principal investigator for CMEP and the Killam Chair in Ocean Studies at Dalhousie University. 

“We wish we could go further,” he says. “But the project ends in March… Before that happened, we wanted to be able to share what we’ve been able to do with the people of Lunenburg, who’ve been so supportive.”