Thursday, August 23rd, 2 pm – 3 pm, with Stephanie Archer, marine biologist.

This presentation is part of the Expert Speaker Series. Admission is $5.00 per person. Youth 18 and under attend for free. Please enter through the Natural History Centre door at the Hornby Island Community School.

Glass sponge reefs are an ecosystem unique to the coastal and shelf waters of the US and Canada’s Pacific coast. Since the late 1980’s, when the first glass sponge reefs were discovered in Hecate Strait, researchers at Natural Resources Canada and Fisheries and Oceans Canada have discovered and surveyed many reefs along BC’s coast- including one just East of Hornby Island. I will introduce you to this amazing ecosystem, the sponges that build the reefs, the animals that call the reefs home, and our research aimed at conserving this ecosystem for future generations.

Stephanie has a PhD from North Carolina State University where she worked in the Layman Lab studying how sponges alter community composition and ecosystem function in tropical and subtropical nearshore marine ecosystems. She is now an NSERC Visiting Fellow with Fisheries and Oceans Canada where she studies species interactions and ecosystem function of Glass Sponge Reefs.

This is the final event of our summer programming.