[BCMA] Discover Our Deep Water Jurassic Park with the Maritime Museum of BC

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Discover our own Deep Water Jurassic Park at the Maritime Museum of BC!


The Sponge Reefs of British Columbia – a Deep Water Jurassic Park

   Wednesday, May 23rd
   7-9pm (Doors open at 6:30pm)
   Cost: $12 General Admission; $10 Seniors and Students; Free Members and
   children 12 and under.


   The deeper waters of BC’s continental shelf are home to many massive and
   wonderful  glass sponge reefs. These incredible creatures have grown over a
   span of 9,000 years! They are up to 25 metres in height and cover hundreds
   of square kilometres of the seafloor. Like coral reefs, sponge reefs develop
   by one sponge growing on the skeleton of another, and similar to coral
   reefs, they form important habitat for many species of fish and
   invertebrates.

   The reefs are most closely related to extinct sponge reefs that once covered
   much of southern Europe during the Age of Dinosaurs. To some extent they
   occupy a similar place in the environment, or the same ecologic niche, that
   they did during the Jurassic Period, which was their time of greatest
   abundance. For this reason they are considered to be a kind of “living
   fossil”. Unfortunately many of the reefs have been badly damaged or
   destroyed by fishing activities, including trawling, over the past 60 years.
   Efforts to protect the reef systems are ongoing, with the goal of enclosing
   the main reef areas in a designated Marine Protected Area.

   Join the Maritime Museum of BC and presenter Kim Conway to discover how
   and where the reefs have formed, some of the interesting ecological and
   geological controls on sponge reef development, and also take a quick look
   at their ancient reef ancestors that once thrived across much of southern
   Europe.


   Kim Conway is a marine scientist who works for the Geological Survey of
   Canada in marine geology at the Institute of Ocean Sciences at Sidney, BC.
   He has, with colleagues, mapped much of the seafloor of offshore western
   Canada and studied many seabed phenomenon including active tectonic faults
   and other geological hazards to people living in BC.
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