A milestone in ecologically friendly marine transportation for Atlantic Canada was reached on Aug. 12 with the launch ceremony of the first Cape Islander style vessel to be refitted for electric propulsion. The Peggy’s Cove Express, a diesel-powered tour boat (formerly a fishing vessel), was converted to a hybrid system with a clean, battery-powered electric motor in parallel with the original diesel engine. Renamed the Alutasi, this vessel will be Canada’s first Transport Canada Marine Technology Review Board approved boat using electric propulsion powered by lithium-ion batteries.

JASCO measured underwater noise from the original power train, testing various combinations of transit speed. loading conditions and propeller wear, and will soon repeat the measurements for the newly installed electric propulsion system to quantify the environmental benefits of going electric for this style of vessel.

JASCO Victoria’s resident bioacoustician and PhD candidate Xavier Mouy is a featured guest on Lumières’ upcoming webinar Bioacoustics - Voices of the Ocean. In this live online event happening Saturday June 27th at 7 p.m. Eastern, Xavier will join fellow researchers from around the world to discuss the threats of ocean noise pollution on mammals and fishes and what we can do about it.

JASCO Applied Sciences takes a knee in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.

JASCO’s leadership and global team uphold the respect of human dignity and the value of every person as our guiding principle. We stand in full support of a communal push for humankind to reject all forms of discrimination and prevarication of one individual or group over any other.
–Roberto Racca, JASCO's Chief Communications Officer

As many of us pause and ponder how we, ourselves, can shape and support this long-overdue movement, we’d like to share some resources.

For ten years, Craig Evans has helped make the science curriculum exciting for the kids in Mrs. Tracey Evans’s classroom. Every year Craig teaches the fourth graders at Grosvenor-Wentworth Park Elementary about sound energy and how humans and animals use sound to communicate, even under water. After listening to some animal sounds, the children get to see which ones they sound like with JASCO’s educational DORI software, which stands for Detecting Oceanic Real-time Impersonations. The students thanked Craig and JASCO with dozens of beautifully illustrated cards.

JASCO Applied Sciences is featured as a Top 10 Ocean Influencer for 2019 in the Nov/Dec Ocean Exploration issue of ECO Magazine.

A new study will help identify optimal locations, technology and scientific approaches to maximize the effectiveness of whale monitoring in and around a major Canadian shipping region with the goal of mitigating ship strike risk. 

The study uses autonomous underwater gliders and fixed moorings, both equipped with digital acoustic monitoring devices, to locate whales in the Honguedo Strait, between Anticosti Island and the northern Gaspé Peninsula in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. 

Team members from JASCO ‘s global locations joined millions of people worldwide in climate action demonstrations and marches through cities and smaller communities. As the Climate Strike date of 27 September, 11 a.m. swept around the globe, JASCO staff took to the streets to express their concern for the planet and demand for better policies to protect it.

With only 75 individuals, the Southern Resident killer whales (SRKW) are critically endangered and face imminent threats to their survival.

A new Government of Canada poster and pamphlet outline the 2019 rules for boating around killer whales on the BC south coast. Help spread the word by sharing this article.

Roberto Racca, JASCO’s Chief Communications Officer, contributed an article to the Ocean Sound special issue of ECO Magazine, announced today.

From the article:
Vulnerable marine species and critical ecosystems worldwide are increasingly at risk of noise-related injury and disturbance from human activity. Shore-connected underwater acoustic observatories enable long-term, real-time monitoring that can document trends in underwater noise levels and simultaneously detect the presence of whales and other aquatic species.

JASCO Applied Sciences was honoured with the 2nd annual Gully Recognition Award for its contributions to the scientific understanding of the Gully Marine Protected Area (MPA). The award is given yearly by the Gully Advisory Committee, a group of government and non-government entities that advises DFO regarding the management of the Gully MPA.

JASCO’s Dartmouth staff welcomed the sunny weather during their annual litter clean-up in honour of Earth Day.

JASCO’s OceanObserver will soon be flying high as a result of a new partnership with Igloo Innovations Inc. JASCO and Igloo have announced an agreement to integrate the OceanObserver underwater acoustic monitoring technology into Igloo’s SeaHawk line of robotic flying vehicles.

In September 2017, JASCO’s global headquarters in Halifax, NS, achieved ISO 9001:2008 certification, which has since been updated to ISO 9001:2015. In November 2017, the Victoria, BC, office also achieved ISO 9001:2015 certification, meaning that JASCO Applied Sciences (Canada) Ltd is now fully certified.

On November 14, US$1 million of funding was announced for the Stones Metocean Monitoring Project. JASCO will receive a portion of these funds to deploy an AMAR G4 alongside Shell’s Stones Monitoring Station in the Gulf of Mexico. At 3000 m depth, this will be JASCO’s deepest acoustic deployment yet.

JASCO and Teledyne Webb Research have teamed to deploy a Slocum G3 underwater glider fitted with JASCO’s OceanObserver™ intelligent acoustic monitoring system in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The glider was deployed September 15 in the Orpheline Channel on a 6-week test mission to attempt to detect and record North Atlantic right whales.

Dr Jonathan Vallarta, a Senior Project Scientist with JASCO Applied Sciences based in Mexico, represented that country at the nineteenth meeting of the United Nations Open-ended Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and the Law of the Sea (ICP19) convened 18-22 June 2018 at UN Headquarters in New York.

JASCO scientists Dr Jonathan Vallarta and Dr Melanie Austin are helping build Mexican scientific capacity and increase national interest in the field of underwater acoustics. In September, the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education at Ensenada (Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada, CICESE) hosted a three-day acoustic workshop at the UNAM campus in Ensenada, Mexico.

The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority has received international acclaim for its initiative to incentivise quieter vessels by offering substantial discounts to ships meeting prescribed underwater noise emission criteria. VFPA's Enhancing Cetacean Habitat and Observation (ECHO) program aims to better understand and manage the impact of shipping activities on at-risk whales throughout the southern coast of British Columbia. Key to this VFPA initiative is the ability to accurately assess underwater sound emissions from vessels as they navigate the access corridor to the port. This is enabled through the deployment and operation by JASCO Applied Sciences, in collaboration with Ocean Networks Canada (ONC), of Underwater Listening Stations that provide real-time automated measurements of vessels’ noise emissions relative to other ships in their class through JASCO's PortListen® solution – an ANSI-conforming acoustic measurement system and web-enabled user interface, supported by ONC’s subsea network and data archive.

David Hannay, Chief Sciences Officer at JASCO Applied Sciences Ltd, presents information on the development of the Strait of Georgia Underwater Listening Station (ULS) to Transportation Minister Marc Garneau.