Grant: Engage Grants Program

Coastal and Ocean Resources Inc (CORI), a marine geological and environmental consulting company based in Sidney B.C. and Dr. Audrey Dallimore, Royal Roads University, will collaborate to validate and perform the first field ground truthing of a new computerized Nearshore Habitat Mapping Model that CORI has had in product development for the past two years. An understanding of the spatial distribution of nearshore benthic (bottom) habitats in the marine environment is required to: implement ecosystem based fisheries management; assess species distribution and the recovery potential of species reduced from historic abundance; and understand sensitivities of species of interest for fisheries which may be impacted by future industrial development. The critical nearshore interface between intertidal and deep marine areas (>50 m) represents a problematic zone frequently presented as an unmapped zone or a "white strip" on many benthic habitat maps. To address this problem, CORI has been developing a predictive computer modeling technique which combines bathymetric data, existing coastal intertidal habitat classification data, a model of numerical tidal data and spatial modeling techniques to predict the nature of the critical "white zone" benthic habitat. The proposed project will undertake a field based ground truthing of the model in the Broughton Archipelago area of the central B.C. coast, to verify the model's predictions. This collaboration will advance our understanding of the largely scientifically unknown nearshore area while developing both a scientifically and also commercially applicable and cost-effective predictive computer modeling tool for broad application to studies of the nearshore area. This innovative approach will have wide applications for habitat resource managers and nearshore fisheries (e.g., urchin, geoduck fisheries) as well as coastal community planners including First Nation's community fisheries.