Dalhousie's ocean researchers ride 1st wave of Research Trust Nova Scotia funding

Ocean researchers at Dalhousie Universitywalked off with the lion's share of funding in the inaugural award from the $25-million Research Nova Scotia Trust.

Of the nine projects receiving a total of $6.5 million in funding part of an announcement made Tuesday by Premier Stephen McNeil six are from Dalhousie.

Sara Iversonof the Ocean Tracking Networkgot $2.9 million the largest award to add to the Halifax-based fleet of autonomous gliders thatmonitor ocean conditions.

Some of the gliders will be configured with hydrophones to distinguish between different whale species.

"We hope to build a real-time warning system where the gliders detect a right whale and relaythat information in near-real-time to ships, who can [then] avoid collisions," Iverson toldCBC News at the site of the funding event at Dalhousie's Ocean Sciences Building.

The research will also have commercial applications. Gliders will be used to track northern cod tagged with acoustic transmitters.

"We can look at their movement, migration, spawning grounds to tellus where we need to protect them and what we need to do before we start to responsibly fish them again," Iverson said.

Tracking earthquakes and foreign subs

Mladen Nedimovic is getting the second-largest award of$2.7 million to set up the first national seismic-monitoring network in Canada's three oceans.

When up and runningin two years,Nedimovic and researchers from nineother universities in fiveprovinces will deploy 130 ocean-bottom broadband seismometers.

"This will be the largest facility of its kind in the world," Nedimovic saidTuesday.

The seismometers will be built with Canadian technology. The primary focus is on monitoring areas that generate underwater earthquakes, but there are other applications.

A seismometer planned for deployment in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, for example, can also be used to track right whales, Nedimovic said. The technology can be used to assist offshore oil and gas exploration.

And the Department of Defence is interested in another application.

"These instruments, if deployed in the Arctic, could listen for submarines hopefully passing bythat's what we believe is possible," Nedimovicsaid.

More money coming

While Dalhousie was front and centre at Tuesday's announcement, the fund's trusteeColin Doddssaid too much shouldn't be made of that.

"The aim is to look at clusters, so today is oceans. There will be more in the future with a different focus," said Dodds, a former president of Saint Mary's University.

McNeil saidthe first $6.5 million out of the door will leverage another $20 million in corporate and federal government spending, as well as support 170 jobs and provide training for more than 200 research graduates, interns, lab technicians and others in academia.

"It tells you how much research has been happening. The super cluster is building on what has been taking place," he said.

Iverson saidsome of her research money will be used to help train undergraduate students to remotely pilot the marine gliders that ride the ocean waves for up to a year.

"[It] is a really invaluable experience because gliders aregoing to be a big deal going forward and their education will be really important," she said.