The waters off Nova Scotia’s south shore are dotted with islands but there is one remarkable one with a rather unusual owner and with a very special purpose. It’s Bon Portage Island and it’s owned by Acadia University as a classroom in the Atlantic.
Dave Shutler, the biology professor who is Acadia’s Director of the island describes it as a piece of habitat that is largely undisturbed which they want to preserve so for its own sake as well as to maintain a smoothly running research operation for budding biologists. The highlight of that research operation is a two-week field course for undergraduate students where they can get a taste of doing research in a natural habitat under the watchful eyes of their professors. Professor Shutler feels they can learn more in two weeks on the island than in a semester sitting on campus learning from books.
Professor Mike Dadwell agrees. He remembers when a field trip to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia turned him into a biologist on fire. Now he’s doing the same to young students showing them the exciting things that can go on in his specialty, the inter-tidal zone, the shore between hide tide and low tide marks.
Bon Portage Island is also important as a bird banding station. This whole region is known as the Atlantic flyway, a corridor that birds use during migration. Coastal islands like Bon Portage offer birds a last chance to fuel and rest up before making the long flight across the water to Cape Cope. So volunteers with the Atlantic Bird Observatory will spend months here recording data on these birds as they’re passing through.
This beautiful, natural habitat worlds away from the disturbance of regular human activity where budding scientists can develop and birds can be banded and recorded would not have been so well preserved if not for the generosity of Merrel and Evelyn Richardson. The Richardson’s were once lighthouse keepers on the island gave it to Acadia University when they were getting on in years. It’s now a gift that will continue to enrich for generations.
