The PromoScience Expeditions – 2019 to 2021

Royal Roads' Audrey Dallimore received an NSERC grant in 2019 to research expeditions that bring marine science and technology to BC coastal communities.

Executive Summary

The popular research ship tours of the PromoScience 2010 Salish Sea Expedition and the 2018 PromoScience Expedition will continue to bring marine science and technology dockside to BC coastal communities in the next three years. The Canadian research vessels CCGS Vector and Raincoast Survey, along with their science crews from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Royal Roads University, will again travel to remote areas including Indigenous schools and communities to engage youth and their teachers. Onboard, scientists will engage with youth and their teachers, families and communities, both in interactive science activities and in Expedition-supported community and school-based follow-up science projects aimed at resolving local community-identified marine and environmental issues. The ship’s support and scientists are from the collaborating partners. PromoScience funds will facilitate community engagement, including that of Indigenous communities and schools, as well as logistics and support for student and teacher participation in follow-up projects. During the pandemic, we moved our community outreach online with partners, Clayoquot Biosphere Trust, West Coast N.E.S.T., Association of Wetland Stewards in Clayoquot and Barkley Sounds, Cedar Coast Field Station, Strawberry Isle Marine Research Society and Raincoast Education Society.

Section One: Excellence of the organization

Indicator: Ability of organization and its staff to deliver the proposed program(s). The proposed PromoScience Expeditions (PE2019-21) will follow the successful templates of the 2010 PromoScience Salish Sea Expedition (SSE)(1) and the active PromoScience Expedition (PE2018). Our overall objectives are to bring further science learning and recent technologies dockside in small BC coastal communities, and to encourage youth to think about how they can contribute positively to sustaining their coastal communities by pursuing educations and careers in science and technology.

In both the SSE and the PE2018, our science team from Royal Roads University (RRU), Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and Natural Resources Canada/Geological Survey of Canada-Pacific (NRCan) took the CCGS Vector from her berth at the federal Institute of Ocean Sciences (IOS) on an educational and outreach cruise to youth, their teachers and the public in five Salish Sea communities in 2010 (over 2,000 participants) and five West Coast Vancouver Island (WCVI) communities in October 2018 (1,500 participants expected). The same team of collaborators will be in place for PE2019-21 and, once again, our target participants are Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth, their teachers and families in small BC coastal communities which do not have access to equal science learning opportunities compared to urban centers. Our science crew of at least 50% women will encourage women and girls to pursue an interest in science and marine technologies.

Dr. Audrey Dallimore remains the applicant and team lead. An NSERC-funded Earth and Ocean Sciences researcher, she has been Chief Scientist or Participating Scientist on over twenty research cruises aboard the CCGS Vector. She is core faculty at Royal Roads University, which maintains a commitment to research themes relating to innovative learning experiences and sustainable communities, livelihoods and the environment. She led the Indigenous-centered 2017 PromoScience project Learning by the Sea - Clayoquot Sound (LBTS-C), working with First Nations (FN) Nuu-chah-nulth youth of the Ahousaht tribe in their Clayoquot Sound regional territory. She led the popular 2014-16 NSERC PromoScience project Learning By the Sea--Clam Gardens in the southern Gulf Islands, working in partnership with Gulf Islands National Park Reserve and the local Hul’q’umi’num and WSÁNEĆ Nations. LBTS- Clam Gardens(2) is now an annual and popular on-going outreach and educational program now fully funded by Parks Canada. The past five years of LBTS projects working with FN students and their communities have been highly successful and brought working scientists and FN knowledge holders together to work with Indigenous and non-Indigenous students on science projects designed for and located in traditional FN cultural landscapes.

Dr. Randy Enkin is an Earth and Ocean Scientist with NRCan and was one of the lead scientists for the SSE 2010 and PE2018. He has been actively involved in Science Fair organization for youth on the local, regional and Canada-wide competition levels for the past 20 years and has recently led the Geological Survey of Canada’s 150th Anniversary public outreach and education events in the Pacific Region. Dr. Enkin, along with our DFO lead Peter Chandler for PE2018 (an Oceanographer and Chief Scientist on scores of research cruises aboard the CCGS Vector over the past 20 years) organized an open house at IOS in Sidney, BC, in June of 2017. The open house included school and public tours of the CCGS Vector alongside the dock, with 4,000 participants over four days.

We expect that, similar to our SSE and PE experiences, many technical and science research staff from each partner organization, as well as school and local science NGO staff, will again volunteer to participate in and support the PE. DFO and NRCan will arrange for the donation of ship time on board the CCGS Vector, and RRU will donate its research vessel the Raincoast Survey for PE2019-21.

Indicator: Continuity of the organization. Royal Roads University (RRU), as well partners DFO and NRCan, are all government institutions with solid continuing organization and financial status and with established communications departments. RRU has proven accomplishments in community outreach, including strong links to NSERC PromoScience with six previous grants and to local Indigenous communities in south coastal BC. RRU’s links to Indigenous community include the T'Souke Nation near the RRU campus, the Hul’q’umi’num and WSÁNEĆ Nations of the southern Gulf Islands and the Ahoushat of the Clayoquot Sound region. RRU’s research agenda promotes civic engagement through experiential and place-based community learning programs and supports active engagement with local Indigenous communities. Central to the RRU mandate is a commitment to deliver results of science research to the public and to foster public understanding and appreciation of Canada’s natural and cultural heritage. Both federal government partner organizations DFO and NRCan also have mandates and commitments to deliver the results of science research to the public; specifically, to mount projects and events to raise awareness among the general population, especially young people and Indigenous Peoples, about science activities involving the Government of Canada and its partners.

Indicator: Communication. The PE leads, Dallimore, Enkin and Chandler, all have decades of demonstrated experience in science outreach, communications and media relations through their leadership of science and technology projects, including PromoScience projects with a reach of thousands of participants. The expertise of the team and their organizations, coupled with building upon the communications strategies of the successful SSE 2010(1) and PE2018 will be strong pillars upon which to build the PE2019-21 and follow-up, community-based science projects for students and teachers. The applicant will have access to the expertise of the RRU Media and Community Relations, the Manager of Indigenous Education and Student Services, and Office of Research Services staff to assist in the outreach and press coverage planning. Many of these RRU staff were involved in SSE 2010 and PE2018. NRCan and DFO will contribute staff time from their Communications and Media Relations departments, many of whom were also involved in the SSE 2010 and PE2018. We will again hire our experienced event planner and community engagement lead from both SSE 2010 and PE2018, Ms. Susi McMillan, a multi-lingual outdoor educator and environmental educational outreach expert.

Section Two: Quality of the program

Indicator: Program Objectives. The overall objective of the PromoScience Expeditions is to provide Indigenous and non- Indigenous youth and their teachers in small and remote BC coastal communities, with opportunities to experience and learn about high quality marine science and technology from professional researchers who have decades of experience working in their local coastal areas. We will bring ship-based, interactive, hands-on science experiences to youth and the general public in BC coastal communities who do not have equal exposure to science learning opportunities as their urban counterparts. By raising awareness of ocean science and showcasing careers, college and university programs focused on the coastal environment, we will demonstrate how youth and their communities can play a part in sustaining coastal communities through education and training in science.

Our feedback from SSE2010 participants and PE2018 community engagement visits has been overwhelmingly for the continuation of the ship tours on an annual basis, and having community-based follow-up projects to maintain the connection between scientists of the ship tours and local schools and communities. Therefore, an objective for PE 2019-21 is to create legacy activities in the port communities, whereby PE scientists will support on-going community and school-based follow-up science projects aimed at resolving local community-identified marine and environmental issues. We found that this year, in our advance community engagement visits that occur before the Expedition takes place, follow-up community-based science projects have already been identified that can make our science engagement real, meaningful and on-going for our port communities. The Ucluelet Aquarium will partner with PE2019-21, if funded, to sample the contaminant content of the ocean water piped through the Ucluelet Aquarium on a year-round basis. PE scientists will set up the sampling programs and RRU students will process the samples in the environmental chemistry labs, then meet with and train local high school students to make the project continue into the future.

We expect that many more follow-up projects will be identified in each PE year and could include, for example, real-time web connections to classrooms from scientists working at sea in their local coastal areas; onboard data collection that teachers can then use throughout the year during science classes; on-going connections between our schools and our PE scientists who will help students to analyze, interpret and contextualize the real-time community-based data; the PE - hosting of teacher Professional Development Days; and finally, a student internship program at IOS. In each year, the follow up projects will be chosen in consultation with local communities and schools.

Indicator: Program Content. The annual PE will involve port visits of the Canadian science research vessel the CCGS Vector, and/or the Raincoast Survey, with their science crews and Coast Guard officers and crew, to up to five small BC coastal communities annually, who have limited or no access to science and technology enrichment opportunities (e.g. science centers, colleges, museums etc.). The port calls will be located in the Salish Sea, home to Coast Salish tribes and/or the West Coast of Vancouver Island, within traditional Nuu-chah-nulth Territories, home to fifteen related tribes. These communities are all within School Districts such as SD 70, where over 30% the students are of Indigenous ancestry.

The CCGS Vector will be open during the day to local students and their teachers to permit tours and activities, which will be organized by our advance community engagement and consultation team. In the evenings the ship will reach a broader audience in the community and be open to the public. During the LBTS PromoScience projects, and on our current planning for the PE2018, we found that entire families and communities participated in the PromoScience activities with their youth -- Indigenous youth in particular – resulting in a rich exchange of knowledge and ways of knowing between Traditional Ecological Knowledge and modern “Western” science.

The CCGS Vector will be equipped for this event with all the science gear she is capable of deploying. She will carry eight working marine scientists onboard, and four to six of their colleagues will follow the expedition by land to help out. Scientists who are specialists in many ocean disciplines will be on board to explain and demonstrate the equipment, and show and tell their science research in interactive activities and displays, following the successful template of the SSE 2010 and PE2018. As during on PromoScience LBTS-Clayoquot Sound in 2017, the Raincoast Survey may also be deployed for local projects involving students who can participate in bathymetric mapping, water column, micro-plastics, sediment and phytoplankton sampling and analyses of their local harbor areas. On the CCGS Vector, we will showcase equipment and methods to sample the properties of the water column and the creatures that live in it, core the ocean bottom sediments, deploy complex bottom sounders that give us a picture of what the bottom of the ocean looks like, display computers that help us send sound pulses to the bottom sediments and right through them to the bedrock below, and deploy remotely operated vehicles that can be flown underwater from the ship, and will send back video pictures of the fantastic ocean life and ocean bottom features.

Canada’s research ships are operated as dual research and Search and Rescue (SAR) platforms by the Canadian Coast Guard, who offer many interesting and exciting technical careers. The participation of the local Coast Guard SAR stations was hugely popular during the SSE 2010, attracting many local youth to potentially highly skilled and technical SAR Coast Guard careers in their native West Coast Vancouver Island region and local communities. Local SAR stations will open again for PE2018.

Indicator: Originality/Creativity. The SSE 2010 was the first time that a Canadian research vessel on the west coast was tasked to science and technology outreach and education for youth in their communities. Eight years later, the PE2018 will be the second. During advance PE2018 community engagement visits, we have had more requests for port and school visits from coastal communities than we are able to fulfill in one year. This feedback has encouraged us to apply for three more years of PromoScience funding to keep the science team partners together and the ship tours continuing to respond to a regional need to bring science and technology experiences and training opportunities to small and remote BC coastal communities. The CCGS Vector is a familiar sight in many coastal communities going about her research tasks, however the unique experience of boarding the ship and interacting with her scientists and technicians, officers and crew was hugely popular in SSE 2010 communities. We expect it to be so again for PE2018 communities of Bamfield, Port Alberni, Ahoushat, Tofino and Ucluelet in October.

PE honors the First Nations’ relationship to their history and lands and their deep and traditional ways of knowing about the natural environment, while providing pathways and mentoring for Indigenous youth to acquire the skills and training to work with modern science and technology. For example, at each PE2018 port, faculty and staff of RRU are there to give information about certificate, diploma, undergraduate and graduate degrees that are available from RRU and other Canadian universities, completely or partially online and community based. This type of online education delivery can enable many prospective students from remote communities to receive science and technology training in their own communities without having to move away, disrupting family life and local livelihoods. With more easily accessible science and technology training and education, Indigenous youth can be full partners in planning and having the skills to work towards an environmentally sustainable future for their coastal communities.

A unique advantage of PE2019-21 is that we can rely on our partners from previous PromoScience grants such as the Clayoquot Biosphere Trust (CBT), West Coast NEST, the Ucluelet Aquarium, Parks Canada and the FN participants that have engaged in SSE 2010, LBTS2013-16, LBTS Clayoquot Sound 2017 and now the PE2018 (see Letters of Support). Many of these partners are guided by advisory boards that include members of regional First Nations to help us with critical community engagement to help maximize our impact and reach in port communities.

Section Three: Impact and reach

Indicator: Impact of program(s) on target groups. As with SSE2010 and PE2018, PE2019-21 has the potential to reach a core audience of over 2,000 students (about 50 teachers and 500 students and their parents during a PE port visit), through the efforts of our partners’ communications teams. A much larger potential audience of all ages could also be reached through community outreach and press coverage during the PE, and internet accessibility to our legacy educational products, as we did in SSE 2010(3,4). We expect that the impact and reach of the PE will mirror our experiences of the impact of SSE 2010, and the LBTS projects which have been, as we had hoped, transformative in terms of developing innovative, culturally inclusive, educational opportunities for youth of local BC communities. We experienced firsthand during the LBTS projects, and this year’s PE2018, that numerous barriers such as poverty, lack of knowledge and training, government regulations, and environmental conditions still exist which prevent Indigenous youth, and indeed the general populations in stressed resourced-based coastal communities, from being able to access the resources, training and knowledge required to best plan for and execute sustainable futures in these places(1,2,3,6). The SSE 2010, LBTS2013-17, PE2018 and now the proposed PE2019-21 explicitly work to lower these barriers, providing opportunities for youth to study and access their important coastal cultural landscapes, and develop knowledge alongside both their Elders and mentors from the science community. By having coastal youth participate in our BC coast PromoScience projects with university and government researchers, we can help to remove real and perceived regulatory and educational barriers for Indigenous youth, and also non- Indigenous youth in small, economically and environmentally challenged coastal communities(5,6). We hope that a better understanding of the science we are doing at the doorstep of their communities will foster the students’ feelings of curiosity for the ocean around, and that our follow-up projects will create a lasting legacy of community engagement.

Indicator: Impact of PromoScience Funding. The prospect of the PromoScience seed funding leveraged $235,000 in-kind support for the PE2018 application, including the ship time, science and Coast Guard crew, and resources of RRU, NRCan and DFO, and has generated other sources of funding and in-kind support from our port communities. This level of leveraged and in-kind support is expected for the PE2019-21 as well with $268,150 per year in kind secured from RRU, NRCan and DFO already (a total of $804,450 for the three years of the project). We will use PromoScience funds to hire two experienced contractors to oversee critical community engagement and the many details of a ship-based event execution, to coordinate the science content for schools, and to follow-up regarding community-based science projects. PromoScience funds will support advance community visits of PE staff to each community and participating schools to establish community engagement, coordinate logistics, planning and science content for the PE visit, and consult on and establish the community-based follow-up science projects. The funds will be used for educational materials and equipment for follow-up projects, for FN engagement activities that often require honoraria and/or community meals, and to support local participants’ transportation to PE activities and events. Transportation proved to be a major barrier, particularly for Indigenous youth and their teachers in our advance planning for the PE2018.

Indicator: Target audience and focus on under-represented groups. The PE ports of call are resource dependent communities, hard hit by economic down-turn and reduced fish stocks. The sustainability of these communities depends on the targeted education and training of their youth, many of whom are Indigenous, and an understanding of current coastal ocean science issues facing their communities including climate change impacts such as sea level rise and extreme storm events, earthquake and tsunami preparedness and rapidly changing fisheries(5). It is hoped that the PE will showcase the potential for an exciting future for local youth in training for a career in science and technology by demonstrating the vibrant and exciting ocean research happening right now on their doorstep, research that can address urgent environmental and socio-economic sustainability issues in their communities. The PE specifically targets Indigenous youth who are one of the fastest growing segments of the Canadian population. However, the proportion of Indigenous people with a degree or diploma lags significantly behind non- Indigenous Canadians. Of the Indigenous people with a degree, certificate, or diploma, roughly only 5% are science-related. Indigenous youth in Canada face heavy odds they must uniquely overcome to fully participate in the rewards of Canadian society; education is the most powerful antidote to this(6). Following our popular SSE 2010 and LBTS and PE2018 PromoScience projects, the PE2019-21 will be just as culturally relevant, confidence-building, and inspiring to Indigenous youth and their communities. The PE2019-21 will also bring a rich understanding and appreciation of the long FN history of sustainable living on the BC coast.

References:

(1) NRCan. (2010). The Salish Sea Expedition. Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/user/SalishSeaExpeditions

(2) Parks Canada. (2015). Clam gardens: Learning together. Youtube. https://youtu.be/j2wPVx4sCN0

(3) Westnedge, K., & Dallimore, A. (2013). The Salish Sea Expedition: Science outreach from the gangplank. In V. Tong (Ed.), Geoscience research and outreach: Schools and public engagement (pp.47-54). Innovations in Science Education and Technology book series, 21. Springer. http://doi-org-443.webvpn.fjmu.edu.cn/10.1007/978-94-007-6943-4_4

(4) Westnedge, K., Hill, P., Dallimore, A., & Kung, R. (2011). Salish Sea Geotour Guide and map. Natural Resources Canada. Available online at CGEN/Geotour website. https://www.cgenarchive.org/geotours.html

(5) Lemmen, D. S., Warren, F. J., James, T. S., & Mercer Clarke, C. S. L. (2017). Canada’s marine coasts in a changing climate. Government of Canada. https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/sites/www.nrcan.gc.ca/files/earthsciences/files/pdf/NRCAN_fullBook%20%20accessible.pdf

(6) McMahon, T. (2014, July 21). Second-class children: Aboriginal youth face a fate that would horrify Canadians. Macleans. https://archive.macleans.ca/article/2014/7/21/secondclass-children