OTN Canada: Understanding Species Movements, Interactions, and Environmental Variability Across Canada’s Three Oceans
OTN Canada is a 7-year Network program funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada, beginning in January 2010. This Network represents the research hub for all of OTN and will make use of new and innovative technologies across Canada's Atlantic, Arctic, and Pacific Ocean "Arenas" to better understand continental shelf and ocean ecosystems. OTN Canada is a partnership primarily between university researchers and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) Canada, but also draws upon an extensive and wide-ranging collaborative effort with scientists and managers from other federal and provincial departments, conservation agencies, and industrial collaborators.
The paramount objective of OTN Canada is to better understand changing ocean dynamics and their impact on ocean ecosystems, animal ecology, and ocean resources, with the aim to address critical issues in resource management and implications for ocean governance. The Network's research program will address important questions concerning ocean physics and modeling, animal movements, and the impacts of climate variability and change on ocean ecosystems and animal migrations. Technological advances will provide information on key marine species relative to changing ocean dynamics within the Canadian Exclusive Economic Zone. Researchers will develop new procedures for documenting and monitoring animal interactions at biodiversity hotspots in the open ocean. Central to this will also be the production of a new generation of tag and receiver technologies. This will encourage the continuing use of the OTN infrastructure and its inclusion in the suite of technologies that constitute the permanent Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), the ocean element of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). Partnership with social scientists, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), will consider current and newly acquired scientific understanding and address issues surrounding social and environmental threats, management constraints, and future law and policy measures.
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