Subject Area
Deepsea
Marine Geology, Geophysics
Activities
Cabled ocean observatories: As Director
of the $150 million NEPTUNE Canada Project, most of my academic time during
2001-2011 was spent in directing the design, funding, installation and initial
operation of NEPTUNE Canada. This is the world’s first regional cabled ocean
observatory. It will revolutionize the ocean sciences and provide real-time
data from hundreds of remotely operated sensors (c. 50TB/yr) over a 30-year
period (www.oceannetworks.ca). The observatory includes an 800km
backbone cable with five major nodes that bring abundant power (10kV DC) and
high bandwidth (10Gb/sec) communications to hundreds of sensors that form a
network that extends from the coast across the northern part of the Juan de
Fuca tectonic plate. Nodes are located in water depths ranging from 100m near
the coast to nearly 3000m at the ocean spreading ridge and the abyssal plain.
The observatory involves scores of scientists, a consortium of 12 Canadian
universities led by UVic and many international scientists and collaborating
institutions and a staff of 45 (ONC now has a staff of over 110). This work has
resulted in me being a member of the Science Advisory Committee of both the
Canadian Ocean Tracking Network (led by Dalhousie Univ.) and the Canary Islands
ocean observatory (PLOCAN) and being the founding Chair of the UN
ITU/WMO/UNESCO IOC’s Joint Task Force on SMART ocean cables for monitoring
global climate and sea level change and tsunami hazard (2012-16).
Skills
Geology: Paleozoic stratigraphy,
paleontology, paleoecology, paleobiogeography; biological and chemical events
in ancient oceans; conodont paleobiology; Cenozoic offshore basins, BC.
Earth/ocean sciences: SMART cabled
ocean observatories.
Management of earth/ocean departments at three universities and one government agency; Director of major earth/ocean research initiatives.
Comment(s)
Honours,
fellowships and scholarships
NATO
Research Fellowship. 1964-65, University of Wales, Swansea
Past-President's
Medal, Geological Association of Canada, 1977
Geological
Association of Canada. National Lecturer, 1978
Fellow,
Royal Society of Canada, 1982
Bancroft
Award, Royal Society of Canada, 1982
J.
Willis Ambrose Medal, Geological Association of Canada, 1991
Order
of Canada, appointed Member, 1996
Queen’s
Golden Jubilee Medal, 2002
Elected
Member of National Academy of Sciences, Cordoba, Argentina, 2003
Elkanah
Billings Medal, Geological Association of Canada, 2005
Honorary
Degree (Doctor of Science honoris causa),
University of Waterloo, 2007
Pander
Society Medal, 2009
Logan
Medal, Geological Association of Canada, 2010
Brady
Medal, The Micropalaeontology Society, 2010
Queen’s
Diamond Jubilee Medal, 2012
Honorary
Degree (Doctor of Science honoris causa),
Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2016
