Dorthea Hangaard

Special Project Manager, Living Oceans Society

Dorthea is coordinating the Finding Coral Expedition. She has been interested in protecting cold water corals since she began working at Living Oceans Society in 2004 and discovered that  there is no protection for corals, and very little understanding of their extent and habitat  function in B.C.

Dorthea researched and co-wrote  the Living Oceans brochure on Deep Sea Corals, and presented our spatial analysis of bottom trawl observer data at the Miami Cold Water Coral and Sponge Symposium in 2005.  She was an invited expert to the Fisheries and Oceans Canada Science Advisory Review on the Impact of Bottom Trawls and Scallop Dredges on Benthic Habitat held in Montreal in  March of 2006. In June of 2006 she represented Canadian ENGOs as the controversial Sustainable Fisheries Resolution was Drafted at the U.N., in which a moratorium on high seas bottom trawling in unregulated waters was struck down.  She has been an invited stakeholder to discussions on the drafting of the National Sensitive Benthic Areas Policy and Regional Coral-Sponge Conservation Strategy. 

Contact Dorthea at  dhangaard@livingoceans.org or 250-973-6580 with any questions about this expedition.