2016: A Year in Review

by Magali Grégoire

2016 is the year that the Back to the Sea Society was officially born! 

I have been slowly working towards the idea of opening a "mini aquarium" in or around Halifax since the start of 2015. I began to spread the word as I worked with my mentor, Founder of the Petty Harbour Mini Aquarium, and other advisors to build local relationships and put a plan in place. However, it wasn't until March 2016 that I welcomed my first official Board member, Maggie Sutherland. 

Maggie was quickly joined by Courtenay Parlee and, a few months later, we added Greg Sheffer's name the team. Rodrigo Menafra completed our Board of Directors team for 2016 when he joined us in the fall. 

These individuals bring to the table an incredible amount of knowledge and, above all, passion!

A huge thank you to these four wonderful people who have been among the first to believe in the proposed Back to the Sea Aquarium. Your hard work has already paid off! 

From left: Magali, Maggie, Courtenay and Greg. Not pictured: Rodrigo.

Our biggest accomplishment of 2016 has been the Touch Tanks Days! 

We created this event series as a proof of concept for the proposed aquarium. We wanted to obtain community feedback, spread the word and begin our mandate of ocean education. 

And it was a huge success! 

With a target of 500 visitors, we tripled this goal and saw over 1,500 people of all ages! 

Touch Tank Day visitors with volunteers Ronnie and Candace. 

We hosted a total of 7 Touch Tank Days, with 5 of them being in Fisherman's Cove. We received extremely positive responses from the surrounding communities, making us confident in our decision to establish the aquarium in this location. 

Our thanks to Hope for Wildlife and the organizers of the Sustainable Oceans conference for inviting us along to their ​events. 

Thank you to all the organizations and individuals that helped us in 2016. We look forward to continuing these partnerships and working together in the coming year!

Dalhousie University played an integral part in our Touch Tank Days. After experiencing some delays with our collection permit, John Lindley was able to ensure that we had some animals to show all of those who were anxiously awaiting our touch tanks. 

Since we don't yet have a permanent tank system set up, we were able to keep our animals happy between Touch Tank Days thanks to the Bedford Institute of Oceanography. Paul Fraser set up our holding tank and ensured we could access the animals whenever we needed. 

Our Touch Tank Days had a home thanks to Board member Greg, his wife Catherine and their son and daughter in law Scott and Jenna.

It felt so great when we made those first few brush strokes in our signature colour! 

It was through the Touch Tank Days that we welcomed our very first F(l)ounders, The Image Salon and Eyes on Optometry. As our first big donors, we will forever be thankful for their support! 

Every donation is special and goes a long way, but it's extra meaningful when it comes from your target audience. We strive to inspire and educate young children and, in September, we received their vote of confidence! 

After being nominated by 10-year-old Grace, the members of 100 Kids Who Care voted for us as their non-profit of choice. Each child in attendance brought $10 of their hard earned money and we received a donation of over $300. 

We had such a wonderful time attending their following meeting in December to publicly thank Grace for her nomination and presentation and to show the kids some sea critters! 

In June, I attended the Ocean Literacy Conference: Ocean Optimism and hosted a workshop titled A Catch-and-Release Aquarium for Halifax Metro: Come be Part of the Adventure! It was inspiring to hear what the participants had to say about their relationship to the ocean and how it has changed throughout their lives. I also received many great ideas for our future aquarium! 

And last but not least, we wrapped up the year at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. Their second annual Family Fun Day was titled Fish out of Water, the perfect event to have our touch tanks! We saw over 350 people at the museum that day! 

I did an interview on Mainstreet in January about small-scale aquariums and CTV Morning Live covered the Family Fun Day in December. We had a wonderful year and we can't wait to see what 2017 has in store for us! 

We'll be working hard on our fundraising efforts to make the Back to the Sea Aquarium a reality (with a goal of opening in June 2018) and we look forward to keeping you up to date with our progress. 

Thank you to all our advisors, volunteers, donors and to our consultants Ocean to Eye Level - we could gush about you all day long! 

And finally, thank YOU!

Thank you for reading and thank you for your support! Every e-list subscription, Facebook like, Twitter and Instagram follow and touch tank visit makes a difference in this journey.

You've made it clear that you want to see a catch-and-release aquarium in Nova Scotia, and together, we will make that happen!