Marine biologist Kathy Conlan wants Canadians to understand how their everyday activities affect

the oceans and the North.

While plunging into minus 1.8°C water might be a truth- or-dare ark for some, for Kathy Conlan it’s part of the job. Kathy, a research scientist in marine biology for the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, has dedicated her life to studying the polar regions. Her scuba dives to study marine life sometimes take her below five-metre-thick ice.

A family trip to Canada’s west coast crystallized Kathy’s interest in marine biology when she was a teen. ‘That was the first time I’d ever seen the ocean. It was absolutely beautiful,” she says. She became captivated by the biology of the polar regions after doing her PhD at Ottawa’s Carleton University. Researchers in California were sending sea life to Kathy to study. Her professor suggested she get to know the critters – from worms and snails to starfish and burrowing anemones — a little better; this led to an invitation to an Alaskan expedition. After that, she was asked to goon an expedition down to the Antarctic. “My immediate reaction was, Why would I want to go to a place like that?” says Kathy. Not only did she go, but she’s been back 10 times.

Kathy has shared her expertise through programs such as Students on Ice, which takes high school students on expeditions through the Arctic and Antarctica. She hopes that this intensive program will help spread awareness about conservation issues, especially the warming of the waters and changes to the currents.

Kathy wants all Canadians to realize that our actions, such as releasing contaminants and consuming carbon, affect the health of the North.

Homemakers magazine April 2010 p. 94
Turning Point by Leslie Wicks