How undersea aquifers could become a source of fresh water for coastal communities

Groundwater under the sea floor off the coast of Prince Edward Island could solve a host of problems for the Island, but there are a lot of questions that need to be answered first.

The research vessel Maria S. Merian is currently off the North Shore of P.E.I., using various techniques to search for groundwater below the bottom of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

"P.E.I. is 100 per cent reliant on groundwater and it's a finite resource, and we are very cautious with how we use it, as we should be," said Josh MacFadyen, the Canada research chair in Geospatial Humanities at UPEI.

P.E.I. is the first location explored by the Ocean Frontier Institute for this project.

"It's pretty exciting that we get … to be the first location for this," MacFadyen said.

The search requires two different technologies. First there is a seismic exploration to look for spaces and cracks in the structure of the sea floor to determine where water could be. Following that is an electromagnetic investigation, to determine what kind of fluid fills those spaces.

"Salt water [is] more conductive, compared to fresh water, so we can have a picture of the kind of water that lies below the sea floor,"  said Vittorio Maselli, the Canada research chair in coastal zone processes at Dalhousie University, and the principal investigator on the project.