Creatures and Controversies of Canada's East Coast

Nova Scotia's coastline and the habitat it creates for plants and animals is the focus of a new Museum of Natural History Web site called Creatures and Controversies of Canada's East Coast.

The bilingual Web site will show Nova Scotia's rich natural environment to the world and encourage people to be more observant of environmental changes such as the disappearance of existing species and the progress of new ones.

To produce the site, the museum secured a $209,800 contract from the Virtual Museum of Canada's (VMC) Investment Program. The new site will be made available as a virtual exhibit through the Virtual Museum of Canada gateway (www.virtualmuseum.ca ).

"I would like to extend sincere congratulations to all organizations involved in this significant project," said Rodney MacDonald, Minister of Tourism and Culture. "This work meets an established public need and brings together more than 30 years of interpretive work on marine habitats by our provincial museum staff and non-governmental organizations."

Currently, no other site provides such authoritative and complete information about east coast marine habitats, creatures and issues. Creatures and Controversies of Canada's East Coast will offer new and exciting content produced by the Museum of Natural History and three partners: Marine Invertebrate Diversity Initiative Society, Clean Nova Scotia, and the Ecology Action Centre. These important organizations, known for their commitment to and active responses on environmental issues, will bring to the new Web site well-informed critical insights about Nova Scotia's coastal habitats and controversies surrounding them.

The site will feature underwater photography, 3-D animation, and images and descriptions of 100 plant and animal species. The site will also challenge visitors to think critically about coastal issues including climate change, aquaculture and coastal development.

An exciting part of the site will be animations and games. Animators from Pixelyard Productions Inc. will create underwater creatures that users can manipulate, rotate and zoom.

The creatures themselves can be explored, allowing visitors to the site to discover details about their habitat, feeding, reproduction, regeneration, movement and defence. Pixelyard's animation credits include projects for the Smithsonian Institute and CBC Newsworld.

The Museum of Natural History has been producing quality web content since 1996, including popular sites produced with the support of the Virtual Museum of Canada, such as the Trace Fossil Mystery, Sable Island, Butterflies North and South and East Coast Birds. The museum's complete Web site is at http://nature.museum.gov.ns.ca .

The Virtual Museum of Canada gateway was created by the Canadian Heritage Information Network, a federal agency within the Department of Canadian Heritage, in collaboration with museums, other government agencies, educational institutions and the private sector. The Virtual Museum of Canada is part of the strategy of the Department of Canadian Heritage which seeks to promote the presence of Canadian cultural content in cyberspace.