In 2013, we were honoured to become a Laureate of the Arctic Inspiration Prize for a program called Ikaarvik: Barriers to Bridges. The Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre leads Ikaarvik, a program that works with Arctic youth to be the bridge between their communities and science and between generations within their communities. Youth identify important […]

The Arctic is in the grip of unprecedented change and is warming at twice the rate of any other region in world. Fundamental threats such as man-made pollutants contaminating the marine food web and climate change, are giving rise to complex changes in Arctic weather, ocean currents, sea levels, and sea ice formation. These dramatic […]

By Jeremy Heywood, Vancouver Aquarium diving safety officer Saying farewell to Cambridge Bay did not mean the end of the work for the 2016 Nearshore Ecology Team. Upon our return to Vancouver we had stacks of dive gear clean and stow, receipts to add up, data to collate and images to sort. Over the course […]

By Jeremy Heywood, Vancouver Aquarium diving safety officer Right on schedule, our colleagues John Nightingale and Eric Solomon, who had been travelling on the One Ocean Expeditions vessel Akademik Sergey Vavilov arrived in Cambridge Bay. We met them, said our hellos and discussed plans for the next few days, including setting up an Arctic sea […]

By Clint Wright, Vancouver Aquarium executive vice president & chief operating officer I have found that being unwillingly woken from a deep sleep is rarely a pleasant experience and last night was a jolt — air horn blasts, urgent shouting and a hard smack on the tent got my heart racing and the adrenaline coursing […]

By Jeremy Heywood, Vancouver Aquarium diving safety officer We explored the area to the east of Cape Colborne, which delineates the south-eastern most part of Cambridge Bay (the body of water, not the town). After about an hour boat ride, we decided on a dive site near an exposed sand bar approximately one kilometre off […]

By Clint Wright, Vancouver Aquarium executive vice president & chief operating officer A strong and gusting onshore breeze has been blowing from the north for the last few days and very few narwhals have been passing by — of those spotted only a handful were swimming by on our side of the Sound. The weather […]

By Jeremy Heywood, Vancouver Aquarium diving safety officer  The day after the trip to the Findlayson Islands and Starvation Cove, we spent the morning catching up on chores: filling scuba cylinders, sorting photos, grocery shopping, checking the life support system for collected specimens and making some repairs to our dive gear. We managed to get […]