News

The  Canada C3 expedition is a unique, 150 day expedition from Toronto to Vancouver via the Northwest Passage on board a Canadian icebreaker (the Polar Prince). While the voyage includes a varied science program throughout, it is about much more than science: it’s also about “celebrating our environment, sharing the stories of coastal communities and connecting Canadians from coast to coast to coast.”

The CERC.OCEAN group is proud to support the expedition through the loan of one of our sea-going container laboratories that will support marine microbiological and eDNA research throughout the voyage. The microbial and eDNA work is being conducted by groups from Dalhousie (Julie LaRoche), Laval (Connie Lovejoy), UBC (Steve Hallam and Curt Suttle) as well as U. Victoria (Diana Varela) and DFO’s Institute of Ocean Sciences (Kristi Miller-Saunders) amongst others. As such, the project represents a unique effort to unite Canada’s microbial ecologists in a common survey of Canada’s marine biodiversity at molecular scales. Very much in the spirit of Canada C3!

The container laboratory was constructed by CTS Containers of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia with support from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Nova Scotia Research and Innovation Trust.

Learn more about the Canada C3 Mission.

To get a first-hand account on how our container is faring at sea, read this Blog post written by Allsa Barry, a scientific reasearcher on board.