University of Waterloo granted me sabbatical leave in 2018 to go and learn something new which I could bring back to my research and teaching at the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability. Something I had always wanted to know more about was the Healthy Land and Water program in South East Queensland, Australia. We have developed excellent aquatic monitoring programs in Canada but what we haven’t done as well is to integrate this monitoring into how we make decisions in our watersheds. HL&W has done this. A lot of the science underpinning the program was done at the Australian Rivers Institute at Griffith University in Brisbane. Director Stuart Bunn kindly hosted me at ARI for the first three months of 2018, providing opportunities to talk with ARI staff and HL&W Principal Scientist for Monitoring and Research, Paul Mawell. Canadian Rivers Institute Director Mike van den Heuvel joined me for these talks and we compared notes with our ARI hosts (photo 1 below).
Photo 1: Canadian Rivers Institute visits the Australian Rivers Institute. Left to right: Stuart Bunn (Director, ARI), Simon Courtenay (Chair, Fellow’s Board CRI), Mike van den Heuvel (Director, CRI), David Hamilton (Deputy Director, ARI) – March 8 2018 at the Australian Rivers Institute office, Griffith University, Nathan QLD.
Before returning to Canada my wife and I took the train north to Cairns, visiting coastal towns along the way and the southern extent of the Great Barrier Reef at Lady Elliot Island. Cairns is the jumping off point for the outer GBR where we snorkeled (photo 2) with the stunning array of fish and then learned more about them at Cairns’ wonderful new aquarium (photo 3).
Photo 2: April 7 2018 – outer Great Barrier Reef, Cairns QLD.
Photo 3: April 6 2018 at the excellent new aquarium in Cairns QLD
Back in Canada, May-August was spent in the Canadian Maritimes, addressing the question of whether the HL&W model could be applied here. Former Director and senior DFO scientist Rob Stephenson hosted me at the St. Andrews Biological Station for the summer (photo 4). Of course, all the serious work was done by doctoral student Sondra Eger who was a Visiting Fellow at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre next door (photo 5) hosted by Director Jamey Smith.
Photo 4: Simon and DFO senior scientist Rob Stephenson at St. Andrews Biological Station August 10, 2018
Photo 5: Jamey Smith (Director, Huntsman Marine Science Centre), Sondra Eger, Simon Courtenay at HMSC overlooking Brandy Cove where the St. Croix River Estuary meets Passamaquoddy Bay, Bay of Fundy.