Telling Our Stories Speaker Series presents Ian Tamblyn
Wed, May 08
|Haliburton
Science Needs You in the Chukchi Sea


Time & Location
May 08, 2024, 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Haliburton, 6712 Gelert Rd, Haliburton, ON K0M 1S0, Canada
About the event
In the winter of 1984, I received a letter from an American marine biologist who I had never met. The letter read” Hey, Tamblyn, Science Needs you in the Chukchi Sea. Get your diver’s licence and join us in Nome on July 7th for a month study of the feeding habits of Gray Whales and walrus.”
I burst out laughing when I read this letter but it not a joke. It was an offer that changed the course of my life. I spent that winter in a suburban Ottawa pool and I got my PADI open water certificate diving the murky waters of the St. Lawrence on July 4th. Six days later I made my first Arctic dive at King Island, in the middle of the Bering Strait.
The scientist who made the offer was Dr. John Oliver from the Marine Lab at Moss Landing, California. He had seen me play the previous summer at the marine station at Bamfield, B.C. He wanted me to be the artist in residence on the expedition, believing firmly in a multi discipline approach to his work. As he said, “Tamblyn, we’re benthic scientists, we’ve got our heads in the mud or eyes down a microscope, I am interested in your observational eyes to take in the big picture from another perspective.” He was the first scientist besides Richard Feynman I had ever heard take this approach and since that time there have been few since.
The adventure in the Bering Strait and the Chukchi Sea led to several other expeditions with the “benthic bubs”, culminating with a month of diving under the ice of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. It also led to the creation of two albums, a Juno nomination, a play and a two-part series called “Notes from the Bottom of the World” that aired on CBC’s “Ideas” series with host, Lester Sinclair.
That first expedition opened the door to several other adventures as well, including 27 years guiding and driving zodiacs in the Arctic, Antarctic and other remote parts of the world.
Say “YES!” to adventure.