february 2016 BCBusiness 45 bcbusiness.ca
Peterson and Munck have been able
to privately •inance Hakai and have
eschewed monetary donations (though
Peterson did accept two boats that West
Vancouver businessman Tony Allard,
president of Hearthstone Investments,
donated for use as research boats).
"Eventually, particularly if we expand our
work, we're going to have to look at out-
side sources of support," says Peterson.
"But my own feeling is that if we do what
we do well, we'll be able to gure out a
way to bring in more resources."
for now, Peterson's priority is having
Hakai recognized as a world-class
scienti•ic research institute—which is
one reason Russ Lea is visiting the insti-
tute.
NEON, the organization Lea used
to lead, represents the U.S. National
Science Foundation's largest investment
in ecological monitoring infrastructure—
an ecological equivalent of particle accel-
erators for physicists. Peterson is eager
to see what Hakai can learn from
NEON—
and what a partnership between the two
might look like.
Shortly after their seaplane lands on
Calvert Island, Lea, Peterson and several
Hakai sta' boat up to where
stream No. 1015—recently
wired with sensors that mon-
itor its temperature, height,
¢ow and electrical conductiv-
ity—discharges into the sea.
These sensors will provide
researchers with data on how
the stream behaves 24/7 so
that they can build more accu-
rate computer models of the
watershed's behaviour, par-
ticularly in relation to how it
may shunt carbon from the
land to the sea. It's a small but
valuable puzzle piece in understanding
how the Great Bear Rainforest factors
into global carbon dynamics.
Hakai journeyman electrician Colby
Owen and provincial research hydrolo-
gist Bill Floyd walk Lea through their
handiwork. At rst glance, the scenery
alongside the rushing stream is exactly
what you'd expect were you to bush-
whack in a temperate rain forest. It's a
jungle ¬ym of roots and logs, soaked wet
like a sponge and dripping with moss. But
camou¢aged in the forest is a network of
wires and sensors that Owen and Floyd
have installed in a fashion
that Peterson—who stands
at a remove—describes as
the "appropriate engineer-
ing for the situation as
you nd it."
In one spot, a solar panel
is mounted 10 metres up into
a cedar tree; in another, the
two have co-opted a part
typically used to adjust the
angle of a boat's motor to
automate a complex pro-
cess that measures stream
f low. It's a nuts-and-bolts
approach to engineering that uses
off-the-shelf parts—and for Peterson,
who is seeing the site for the rst time,
it epitomizes how Hakai takes the atti-
tude and ener¬y of a tech start-up and
applies it to science.
"It kind of sums up a particular way
of working, down to using boat parts to
make things work," he says, returning to
the boat after the tour, straight-backed in
a sunshine yellow technical jacket. His
face, at long last, is beaming. "It looks
gizmo-ish but I have the feeling there's
incredible virtuosity going on here."
■
WEIR SCIENCE
(From left) Building
the Koeye Salmon
Weir, a partnership
project between the
Heiltsuk First Nation
and Hakai Institute;
staff analyze ocean-
ography data at Hakai
Quadra field station;
Leo Pointer pulls in
nets to sample
plankton from the
water column
