THERE’S NO SUBSTITUTE for real ocean water when it comes to marine environment experiments. That’s one reason the University of Manitoba, with support from the University of Calgary, is opening the $44-million Churchill Marine Observatory this spring in the town of Churchill, Man., on the edge of Hudson Bay. While making artificial sea water by adding salt can be a fair substitute for some studies, real Arctic Ocean water brims with microbes and plankton, so the facility’s water tanks will provide more realistic results (picture swimming pools with a knack for science). “Otherwise, the base of the food chain is missing,” says David Barber, a professor from the University of Manitoba who specializes in Arctic systems science.
This story is from the March/April 2020 edition of Canadian Geographic.
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This story is from the March/April 2020 edition of Canadian Geographic.
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