After diving in beautiful Browning Pass, I traveled back to the city of Vancouver to spend time with several organizations.  First up was Nuytco Research, world leader in the development and operation of underwater technologies.  Donnie Reid, part of the project development team, took me on a complete tour of Nuytco’s facility where submersibles and Exosuits rated up to 3000 meters are engineered.

After an interesting conversation with Nuytco founder, Phil Nuytten, about his latest innovative ideas, I was able to witness a demo dive of an Exosuit by employees of NASA NEEMO.  It’s not every day you get to see a person wearing a submarine being craned into a pool!

Next up I headed to the Vancouver Aquarium, where I visited Dr. Peter Ross and Kelsey Delisle at the Ocean Pollution Research Program‘s lab.  This lab focuses primarily on microplastics, and is equipped with a special machine that performs FTIR – fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.  This machine is used to obtain an infrared spectrum of a microplastic, which can then be compared against a library of spectrums.  The researchers can then identify the type of plastic, which helps decipher where each particle comes from.  This is crucial to solving the issue of microplastics – if we don’t know where they are coming from, how can we stop them from entering our water resources?

FTIR technology is expensive and mainly used by police departments for crime-solving, making its use in microplastics research extremely rare and cutting-edge.  It was awesome to witness this innovation in ocean research!

Thank you to Donnie and Phil at Nuytco for spending two days with me, and to all the wonderful people at the Ocean Pollution Research Program for teaching me about microplastics.  Thank you to Kelsey Delisle for housing me in a pinch, and to Rolex and OWUSS for this massive opportunity!

Onward to the Florida Keys, Netherlands, and Malta!