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HOUSE COAST:
Cutting-edge research at UVic pulls oceanographer Kate Moran away from Obama By ADRIEN SALA photography by dean azim
Last year, the University of Victoria landed a rather big fish to run Neptune Canada, “one of the most advanced ocean research programs in world,” according to the catch herself, Kate Moran. Before coming to Victoria, Moran was assistant director in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in Washington, DC, advising the Obama administration on the oceans, the Arctic and global warming. She also served on the advisory committee that helped cap the oil well during the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster in 2010. But in 2011, as the end of her term approached, she began to consider whether Washington was really for her. When asked to sign on for another term, she hesitated. “I was going to stay because there’s still a lot to do there,” she says. “But from a timing perspective, nothing gets done. The work I did is advancing policy, but it’s all so slow.” So she looked west to UVic and the cuttingedge research being done at Neptune Canada, the underwater research network managed by Ocean Networks Canada, a non-profit agency funded by the Canadian and BC governments and operated through UVic. Here, Moran found an innovative program that is increasing scientific understanding of ocean activity globally
by providing constant, real-time data through a network of regional underwater laboratories. The acronym “Neptune” explains it all: NorthEast Pacific Time-series Undersea Networked Experiments. The data, shared freely around the world, will be vital to our understanding of seismic activity, sea-level rise and climate change itself. “One of the reasons I came here,” she says, “is because I can actually get things done.”
800 KILOMETRES OF “WIRED” OCEAN Now president and CEO of Ocean Networks Canada, Moran stands watch over more than 800 kilometres of fibre-optic cable that loops across the ocean floor off the southwest coast of Vancouver Island. A sister project, Venus (for Victoria Experimental Network Under the Sea), monitors coastal waters. At six points on the loop, nodes — minivan-sized research pods — are fitted with instrumentation like research cameras, thermometers and seismographs that serve both the non-profit and private sectors. The tools of the not-for-profit Ocean Networks Canada are at her disposal, including a staff of about 70 and a budget in the millions and growing. (The annual budget was $16 million but just this October the program received a further grant of $41.7 million from the BC and federal 29