By Miguel Felismino, PhD candidate at McGill University

In the fall of 2023, a Quebec-based non-governmental organization, Organisation Bleue, reached out to us to participate in an expedition that would take us along the Saguenay River, through the Beluga-rich fjord, and into the St. Lawrence River. This expedition, dubbed Expedition Bleue, would take us through this culturally and ecologically important body of water to study, raise awareness towards, and fight against plastic pollution. Of course we agreed.

During the 18-day expedition, I sampled the surface waters, sediments and macroinvertebrates at 11 sites along the river system. With the help of professional divers and the rest of the crew, I was able to bring back 300+ samples to analyse the levels of microplastic pollution in the system. This will be the basis for the 4th chapter of my PhD thesis. And while I can harp on about the importance of this work and the knowledge gaps that we can fill with my research, I thought I’d instead focus on the values I learned from the people I worked with and the unique perspectives I gained by spending 18 wonder-filled days with them. 

Aboard our formidable vessel, the Vanamo, was a mixed bag of people from various areas of expertise including aquatic and marine sciences but also music production, videography, and creative writing. As we sailed through the fjord and looked in the distance, it dawned on me that while I may not have the same upbringing and connection to these waters as the rest of the crew, we all shared an equal responsibility to protect it and get others to care about it. Given our diverse backgrounds, our approach to tackling that responsibility varied from person to person. While I collected scientific data, the creative writers chose to write poetry and create postcards and the production crew worked on creating digestible media for the public. What surprised me the most is the willingness of each member to help out others who are doing vastly different work and how we ended up incorporating ideas from other disciplines to strengthen our own works.

By human nature, the groups we form amongst ourselves are often driven by things we share. Shared interests, shared values, shared experiences, shared expertise. Natural scientists, which most of the readers of this blogpost likely are, are not an exception – I know I’m certainly not. We often find ourselves in a nest of comfortability, surrounded by people who think like us, talk like us and look like us. While this makes for good breeding grounds for scientific collaboration, it does sometimes cause us to neglect the advantages of diversity – both of people and ideas. This summer, I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to step outside the norm and work with people outside my usual nest. I owe thanks to QCBS for the support which allowed me to explore this opportunity and I hope I am fortunate enough to do more things like this in the future.