Microorganisms living in marine seafloor sediments are of scientific interest for many reasons including their role in cycling nutrients, their metabolic diversity, and the relatively few investigations of their existence due to their habitation of such an extreme and isolated environment. In addition, subsurface microbes can provide insight into their surrounding environment, including signalling the […]

This Mitacs project will enable two MSc students the opportunity to work with the Offshore Energy Research Association and their partners with the Nova Scotia Department of Energy to produce an ArcGIS product and seismic-based model of seep architecture for petroleum exploration of the offshore Nova Scotia margin. These projects will relate newly created genomic […]

The lack of scientific data on the potential effects of instream tidal power is delaying the decision-making process on a technology that shows promise for reducing carbon emissions, and for which Canada could become a global leader in the production of infrastructure. It remains unclear if fishes that occupy Canada’s leading tidal energy test site […]

It remains unclear if fishes that occupy Canada’s leading tidal energy test site in Minas Passage, Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, will be negatively affected by turbine installations. The objective of this project is to determine fishes’ interactions with operating turbines. Of approximately 70 species of fishes that interact with Minas Passage only three have […]

It remains unclear if fishes that occupy Canada’s leading tidal energy test site in Minas Passage, Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, will be negatively affected by turbine installations. The objective of this project is to determine fishes’ interactions with operating turbines. Of approximately 70 species of fishes that interact with Minas Passage only three have […]

Offshore petroleum exploration requires a multitude of techniques to identify a petroleum system in an offshore area. Novel microbiology technologies which focus on the distribution of marine microbes (microbial biogeography) have been proposed as complementary tools to conventional techniques for oil and gas exploration. Hydrocarbon seepage from subsurface petroleum reservoirs is hypothesized to explain the […]

OERA use hydroacoustic echosounder surveys to evaluate the impact on marine life of tidal turbines in the Bay of Fundy. OERA use Echoview software to read in the raw sensor data (e.g. voltages) and convert it to a visual representation. Echoview contains some algorithms to detect the bottom of the ocean. However, the Fundy data […]