Marine co-op makes splash
Gulf Aquarium and Marine Station Co-operative wins $30,000 prize after getting most votes in Facebook challenge.
SYDNEY — A Cape Breton marine research co-operative has won a national competition and a prize of $30,000 that will go toward helping make its proposed waterfront centre a reality.
The Gulf Aquarium and Marine Station Co-operative won the top prize for the Atlantic region by getting the most votes on a Facebook site for the National Co-op Challenge.
“We are very, very excited. I heard last Friday and I was having a terrible weekend not telling anybody,” Gretchen Hull, a founder of the co-operative, said in a phone interview Monday.
The co-op plans to build a waterfront marine centre at Grand Etang and has a long-term lease for land there. The cash prize is to go toward paying an architect and marine-system expert to come up with designs and cost estimates for the centre. A feasibility study has been completed.
In addition to allowing the coop to move ahead with the project’s next phase, Hull, who teaches at the University of Maine, called the win an endorsement from the community and beyond.
They hope to interview the consultants for the design work in early January. Hull said she expects it will take about three months to draw up the plans.
“My hope is that by spring we’ll have some basic plans that we can go back and talk to the community about and talk to other scientists about and get the conversation going, get a bottom-line price for what this is going to cost and launch into our capital campaign and make it a reality,” she said.
The centre would be both a marine field station and research laboratory for the work that is done by the co-operative, as well as an interpretive centre with aquariums where visitors can see living exhibits of the creatures indigenous to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There would also be conference space and some facilities for fishermen.
The non-profit marine cooperative does research in areas such as development of resources and shellfish aquaculture that serve as potential alternatives to the declining fishing industries.
“The other thing is, here we are right on the Cabot Trail, and I’m a teacher myself and really believe in education for the future of this planet. I think we have a big opportunity to teach people not only about the island’s national park but also the great big ocean out there in the Gulf of St. Lawrence,” Hull said.