Bio-Physical Interactions
Image: T. Howatt
Marine biological hotspots, defined very generally as marine ecosystems that sustain an elevated biological presence at one or more trophic levels, play an important role in marine ecosystem dynamics. In many such hotspots, physical oceanographic conditions and/or processes such as water properties, turbulence and circulation features around fronts and canyons, likely play an important role in defining these regions.

Through our group’s involvement with the MEOPAR-funded Whale Habitat and Listening Experiment (WHaLE) project, a collaborative initiative that aims to deepen our knowledge of rare and threatened baleen whales, we seek to better understand the driving physical mechanisms that help define zooplankton (aka whale prey) aggregations in critical baleen whale habitats on the east and west coasts of Canada. To do so, we are using underwater gliders, autonomous drone-like instruments, to collect substantial, high-resolution, long-duration datasets of multiple metrics of ocean physics and ocean biology using a wide range of glider sensor payloads. The unique datasets returned by these ocean observing platforms are allowing us to study ocean physics and ocean biology on a range of time and space scales in a new way, bridging the gap between disciplinary approaches to the study of the ocean and its ecosystems. ​
People:
  • Tara Howatt
  • Tetjana Ross (Institute of Ocean Sciences)
  • The OTN-MEOPAR Dalhousie Glider Team
  • The WHaLE project team












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Select Papers & Presentations:

  • A talk by Ph.D. student Tara Howatt about a physical perspective of zooplankton distributions on the Scotian Shelf presented at the 2018 CMOS Congress in Halifax Canada.
  • A talk by Ph.D. student Tara Howatt about characterizing turbulence & zooplankton distributions in a canyon on the west coast of Vancouver Island presented at the 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland USA.
  • A more general talk by Tetjana Ross about multi-parameter observations of whales, zooplankton & hydrography on the west coast of Vancouver Island using ocean gliders presented at the PICES 25: North Pacific Marine Science Organization 2016 Annual Meeting in San Diego USA.

In the News:

  • An article by Ph.D. student Tara Howatt on using gliders to study whale habitat on the Atlantic Scotian Shelf published in the August 2017 CMOS Bulletin.
  • An article by Ph.D. student Rianna Burnham (UVic) on using gliders to study whale habitat on the west coast of Vancouver Island published in the March 2017 Canadian Ocean Science Newsletter. 
  • An EOAS news story by Ph.D. student Tara Howatt on using ocean gliders to study turbulence and whale habitat in Clayoquot Canyon.
  • A CBC news story on using underwater robots to map Grey Whale habitat off Vancouver Island.