Tears and hugs punctuated the launch celebration of the Nicholas Sonntag Marine Education Centre on Saturday at the Gibsons Public Market. It’s the first aquarium education facility to open on the Sunshine Coast.
Nicholas Sonntag, an engineer and sustainable development advocate who helped cofound the centre as well as the Gibsons Public Market, died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 2015, just before an annual fundraising gala. His wife Linda Sonntag spoke at the event, calling it a “dream come true” and “place-making at its very best.”
The centre is one of four “collect and release” facilities in Canada, a new model for aquariums in which species are kept temporarily and then released back into the wild. “This allows us to display all the animals we have on a rotating basis,” said Maddison Proudfoot, animal care supervisor at the education centre. The centre is planning to release specimens twice a year and to invite the public to attend.
About 200 individual specimens and 70 species are currently on display at the aquarium. Among the highlights are a tiger rockfish caught at a depth of 60 feet (18 metres), and the variegated Puget Sound king crab, which despite its name, is local to the area. “They are not rare, but they are rare to be seen,” Proudfoot said.
Scuba divers collect specimens at sites between Gibsons and Bowen Island, near Gambier Island, Porpoise Bay and Egmont. Endangered species stay in the water. Another attraction includes a display of glass sponge, a prehistoric animal that lives in Howe Sound, one of the only known places with reefs accessible to divers.
While the aquarium is open for casual visits, the centre also has formal programming in store, said Pam Robertson, chair of the board of directors of the Gibsons Community Building Society, operator of the centre. They have partnered with the Sunshine Coast School District to create a curriculum ready for September 2018, and also want to collaborate with the $20-million Pender Harbour Ocean Discovery Centre (PODS), slated to begin construction in October.
“We’re right by the ferry, so when people come up to visit PODS, we might be able to have them present here,” said Robertson, acknowledging it’s a nascent idea. “It’ll take a little bit of time, but that is our vision.” She also said monitoring of the local ecosystem by the centre’s biologists could inform research conducted at the Vancouver Aquarium.
Ongoing donations, grants and sponsorships will fund the exhibits and programming. “There’s a cost to bringing this centre to the Coast, so we’re looking for people to help us,” Robertson said. “Our goal is to keep admission levels as low as we can,” she said, adding the centre needs approximately $150,000 in annual donations. So far, major grants, sponsorships and donations have come from Telus, the Canada 150 Community Infrastructure Program, Island Coastal Economic Trust, BC Rural Dividend Program, Craftsman Collision, the Washington Foundation and the Sonntag family and their friends.
Other speakers at the launch included Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, MP for West Vancouver - Sunshine Coast - Sea to Sky Country; Michelle Morton, a constituency assistant representing MLA Nicholas Simons; Silas White, acting mayor of Gibsons; and K’ána Deborah Baker, councillor with Skwxwú7mesh Nation.
Members of the Nation held a traditional blessing ceremony in advance of the day’s festivities.
“There’s something about the Gibsons Public Market and marine education centre that is bigger than what we see. I get this feeling of optimism that it’s going to spread, this model of community involvement and engagement,” Baker told Coast Reporter following the opening.
Another speaker was long-time friend and Gibsons Public Market co-founder Gerry Zipursky, who called Sonntag a “gentle advocate” of environmental and economic sustainability. “What Nick did is help educate me … to appreciate what’s just a stone’s throw away and to discover how valuable our ocean and marine life is. He opened up my eyes.”
