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Tiabo for now, Kiribati
I’m currently sitting in the departure terminal in Tarawa, the capital of Kiribati. It is a small room made of mismatched wood paneling, with one wall open to the tarmac, and a concrete floor. There are no lights, and a huge fan in the corner keeps the air moving, although it’s still sweltering. My back […]
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Corals are smelly and other anecdotes from the field
There are so many things to love about fieldwork. As scientists, it’s an opportunity to finally get our hands dirty (so to speak) and interact with the systems we’re studying. It’s also invaluable to get to know the communities and people who live in the places we work (scientists commonly treat people as separate from […]
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Diversity in geoscience: Participation, behaviour, and the scientific division of labour at a Canadian geoscience conference
I’m taking a quick break from posting updates about fieldwork in Kiribati to announce that a study I co-authored has been published! Some colleagues and I attended the 2017 Canadian Geophysicists Union meeting in Vancouver with the goal of examining diversity through observations of participation, presentation content, and behaviour in conference sessions. We found that women […]
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Getting to know Tarawa
It was exciting to finally step foot in Tarawa, the capital of the Republic of Kiribati, after hearing about it for so long — my advisor has worked here for a decade or so, and I’ve spent my last three years as his student hearing about his work and its accompanying adventures. I’ve also spoken […]
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Counting down to fieldwork in the Gilbert Islands
In just over a month, I’ll be boarding a plane and heading to Tarawa, an atoll in the Gilbert Islands of Kiribati. I’ll be staying in Tarawa and the nearby Abaiang Atoll for about a month to conduct the first stage of my Ph.D. fieldwork. It’s been a long, dark, rainy winter in Vancouver and […]
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Recent study of scientists and advocacy overlooks gender and racial biases
With the April 22 March for Science in Washington, DC quickly approaching and the current anti-scientific stance of the American government, the scientific community is abuzz with debate over what role scientists should play in activism. In the midst of these contentious times comes a new paper published in the journal Environmental Communication from George […]
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Interview: Scientific research and beauty mix on the Marshall Islands
Recently, I was invited to be a part of last weekend’s episode of the CBC radio show, Quirks and Quarks. The episode explored the ways that scientists spent their summers. It was my first recorded interview, and I was thrilled to be asked to participate. I was also extremely nervous. Fortunately both the producer, Mark Crawley, and the […]
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Bar loe kom (see you later), Marshall Islands!
In Marshallese, iokwe means hello, goodbye, and I love you. Translated literally, it means “you are a rainbow.” It’s not a word that’s reserved for family members or even for friends; if you walk down the street in Majuro, strangers who pass you greet you with iokwe. It is, in my opinion, a beautiful way to tell people […]
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A glimpse of Ebon (Ebon Atoll part 2 of 2)
This is the second of a two-part series about my time in Ebon Atoll. The first post can be found here. Ebon Atoll is known for two things: its beauty and its mosquitos (which are gigantic and plentiful). The main island, Ebon Ebon, is long and narrow. In many places, the ocean is separated from the […]
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Hard at work in paradise (Ebon Atoll, part 1 of 2)
This is the first of a two-part series about my time in Ebon Atoll. The second part can be accessed here. Last Thursday, I hopped in a terrifyingly tiny airplane and joined staff from the Marshall Islands Marine Resource Authority (MIMRA) on a visit to Ebon, the most southern atoll in the Marshall Islands. We were […]
Sara E. Cannon, PhD
Aquatic Conservation Scientist
Sara E. Cannon, PhD 