Today@Dal

From Thursday's Chronicle Herald:

The international Ocean Tracking Network has impressive new digs with the opening Wednesday of Dalhousie University’s $41.5-million Ocean Sciences Building.

The building will also house Doug Wallace, Canada excellence research chair in oceans science and his team, the Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction and Response Network and the Halifax Marine Research Institute.

The building’s container bay holds four portable-lab shipping containers that can be moved onto vessels bound for ocean research trips, plus four new tanks for large-scale experiments in either freshwater, or seawater flowing from the North West Arm at up to 1,250 cubic metres per hour.

Also unveiled on Wednesday is a new self-propelled wave glider robot, remotely controlled, that tracks tagged fish and shark species — good news for researchers tracking Lydia, an endangered great white shark now headed up the Eastern Seaboard, along with several other great whites, for a tasty seal snack around Sable Island.

The shark was tagged off Florida and was off Bermuda about a month ago before heading further north.

The Ocean Tracking Network monitors the location of both large and small ocean and freshwater creatures and links that information with environmental conditions.

The underwater acoustic telemetry technology used by the network to locate tagged fish is manufactured locally by Vemco Ltd. of Bedford. Some 95 per cent of Vemco’s production is exported.

Read the rest of the article on the Chronicle Herald's website.