“No more coal, no more oil, keep the carbon in the soil” chanted Halifax high school students and their supporters outside Province House last Friday. They joined millions of other students around the world striking from school on Fridays protesting inaction on climate change, following the lead of Swedish 16-year-old Greta Thunberg and fuelled by […]
Ocean
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Human behaviour is at the root of orca plight
News about orca mother Tahlequah carrying her dead newborn for 17 days through the Salish Sea this summer was heartbreaking, and rightfully captured the world’s attention. It highlighted the plight of one of Canada’s most endangered marine mammals. The southern resident killer whale (orca) population has dropped by 25 percent in two decades. Just 74 […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Citizen science and genetic testing yield positive results
Since I started working as a geneticist in the early 1960s, the field has changed considerably. James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins won the 1962 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery of the double helix structure of DNA. Researchers then “cracked” the genetic code, which held promise for fields like health […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Wild Pacific salmon face an upstream battle for survival
[Image-1] Salmon have been swimming in Pacific Northwest waters for at least seven million years, as indicated by fossils of large saber-tooth salmon found in the area. During that time, they’ve been a key species in intricate, interconnected coastal ecosystems, bringing nitrogen and other nutrients from the ocean and up streams and rivers to spawning […]
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SCIENCE MATTERS: Industrial damage threatens Blueberry River’s way of life
[Image-1] Industrial activity has profoundly affected the Blueberry River First Nations in northern B.C. A recent Atlas of Cumulative Landscape Disturbance, by the First Nations, the David Suzuki Foundation and Ecotrust, found 73 percent of the area inside its traditional territory is within 250 metres of an industrial disturbance and 85 percent is within 500 […]
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Nova Scotia’s ocean identity
[Image-1] It was northern Cape Breton, an area known for its wildness—all ocean, rock and mountains. I remember being a kid, maybe 10, and it was storming outside. It was a cold and wet day—a perfect day to stay inside—and, instead, we decided to go swimming. This wasn’t a childish dare. This was one of those magical […]
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The briny, grimy deeps
“I would love to see Nova Scotia do the same for marine waste as we have for on-land waste,” Lisa Kretz tells me in Clean Nova Scotia’s lunch room. She is the project officer for the organization’s marine waste project. “There needs to be more awareness and education, one person at a time.” Today it’s […]