The Annual Symposium, under the auspices of the Academy of Science, struck a theme wholly concordant with the environmental and intellectual setting of the Royal Society of Canada's 2015 Annual Meeting. From its vantage on the southeastern tip of Vancouver Island, Victoria and its environs encompass many of the characteristics of British Columbia's stunning coastal landscape, estimated to be the most biologically diverse area of a remarkably diverse province. But, as with most things in life, the most readily visible elements of coastal ecosystems are not always the most interesting, dynamic, or impressive. At varying depths beneath the surface waters lies a plethora of marine life, including sponges, corals, kelp, crustacea, plankton, fish, and marine mammals, not to mention the unusual life associated with deep-water features such as hydrothermal vents and subsea volcanoes. Read more

My research has focused largely on (1) young successions of carbonate rocks, and (2) hot spring deposits.  My interest in carbonate rocks started as an undergraduate at Liverpool University where Dr. Robin Bathurst, a pioneer of carbonate sedimentology, mentored me.  For my Ph.D., Dr. Owen Dixon (Ottawa University) gave me the opportunity to study the Silurian carbonate successions on Somerset Island in the Canadian Arctic.  Subsequent opportunities allowed me to work on carbonate successions of all ages throughout the world.  Given that such studies are rooted on an understanding of modern carbonates, I have, for the last 30 years, focused attention on the analysis of young (< 30 million years old) carbonates found on the Cayman Islands.  Involving numerous graduate students, this multifaceted research has been based on fieldwork, collection of samples, and many different types of laboratory analyses.  The scale ranges from microscopic analysis of individual crystals to island scale modeling of various geological processes.  Read more

The International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) has, in recent years, emerged from a period of introspection and rebirth. How can its activities become known to Canadian life scientists and how can Canadian life scientists find common ground and collaborate with IUBS?