The global lockdown to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic health risks has altered human interactions with nature. Here, we report immediate impacts of changes in human activities on wildlife and environmental threats during the early lockdown months of 2020, based on 877 qualitative reports and 332 quantitative assessments from different studies. Hundreds of reports of unusual species observations from around the world suggest that animals quickly responded to the reductions in human presence. However, negative effects of lockdown on conservation also emerged, as confinement resulted in some park officials being unable to perform conservation, restoration and enforcement tasks, resulting in local increases in illegal activities such as hunting. Overall, there is a complex mixture of positive and negative effects of the pandemic lockdown on nature, all of which have the potential to lead to cascading responses which in turn impact wildlife and nature conservation. While the net effect of the lockdown will need to be assessed over years as data becomes available and persistent effects emerge, immediate responses were detected across the world. Thus, initial qualitative and quantitative data arising from this serendipitous global quasi-experimental perturbation highlights the dual role that humans play in threatening and protecting species and ecosystems. Pathways to favorably tilt this delicate balance include reducing impacts and increasing conservation effectiveness.

Management boundaries that define populations or stocks of fish form the basis of fisheries planning. In the Arctic, decreasing sea ice extent is driving increasing fisheries development, highlighting the need for ecological data to inform management. In Cumberland Sound, southwest Baffin Island, an indigenous community fishery was established in 1987 targeting Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides) through the ice. Following its development, the Cumberland Sound Management Boundary (CSMB) was designated and a total allowable catch (TAC) assigned to the fishery. The CSMB was based on a sink population of Greenland halibut resident in the northern section of the Sound. Recent fishing activities south of the CSMB, however, raised concerns over fish residency, the effectiveness of the CSMB and the sustainability of the community-based winter fishery. Through acoustic telemetry monitoring at depths between 400 and 1200 m, and environmental and fisheries data, this study examined the movement patterns of Greenland halibut relative to the CSMB, the biotic and abiotic factors driving fish movement and the dynamics of the winter fishery. Greenland halibut undertook clear seasonal movements between the southern and northern regions of the Sound driven by temperature, dissolved oxygen, and sea ice cover with most fish crossing the CSMB on an annual basis. Over the lifespan of the fishery, landfast ice cover initially declined and then became variable, limiting accessibility to favored fisher locations. Concomitantly, catch per unit effort declined, reflecting the effect of changing ice conditions on the location and effort of the fishery. Ultimately, these telemetry data revealed that fishers now target less productive sites outside of their favored areas and, with continued decreases in ice, the winter fishery might cease to exist. In addition, these novel telemetry data revealed that the CSMB is ineffective and led to its relocation to the entrance of the Sound in 2014. The community fishery can now develop an open-water fishery in addition to the winter fishery to exploit the TAC, which will ensure the longevity of the fishery under projected climate-change scenarios. Telemetry shows great promise as a tool for understanding deep-water species and for directly informing fisheries management of these ecosystems that are inherently complex to study.

The STRings for Absorption length in Water (STRAW) are the first in a series of pathfinders for the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE), a future large-scale neutrino telescope in the north-eastern Pacific Ocean. STRAW consists of two $$150\,\mathrm {m}$$ 150 m long mooring lines instrumented with optical emitters and detectors. The pathfinder is designed to measure the attenuation length of the water and perform a long-term assessment of the optical background at the future P-ONE site. After 2 years of continuous operation, measurements from STRAW show an optical attenuation length of about 28 m at $$450\,\mathrm {nm}$$ 450 nm . Additionally, the data allow a study of the ambient undersea background. The overall optical environment reported here is comparable to other deep-water neutrino telescopes and qualifies the site for the deployment of P-ONE.

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The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Explorer (P-ONE) [1] collaboration was born to build a new large-scale neutrino telescope in the Pacific Ocean, at 2600 m b.s.l. in Cascadia Basin, off Vancouver Island. The first steps aimed at the feasibility study and the characterisation of the optical properties of the site with a first pathfinder project named STRAW (STRing for Absorption length in Water) [2] [3] [4], deployed in 2018. During the last two years, a second pathfinder project has been developed: STRAW-b. The main goal of STRAW-b is to validate the attenuation length already measured by STRAW and to add new information on the background characterisation with the study of the deep sea diffused light spectrum. It consists of a 500 m mooring (electrical-optical cable communication) equipped with three Standard Modules for environmental monitoring and seven Specialised Modules for background analysis and attenuation length measurements. All the modules are hosted in spherical 13" high-pressure resistant glass housings. Its design started at the end of 2018 and after about two years it has been successfully deployed in summer 2020 in Cascadia Basin site, connected to the underwater Ocean Networks Canada infrastructure about 40 meters away from STRAW. We present all the steps from the design to the realisation of the mooring, with a special focus on the adopted technologies.

The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE) is an initiative by a collaboration of Canadian and German universities as well as Ocean Networks Canada (ONC) to develop a new large-scale neutrino telescope 2600 m below the ocean off the coast of western Canada. While the instrumented volume needs to be at least on the order of km for the physics goals of P-ONE to be met, the density of photo sensors needs to be kept as low as possible in order to minimize construction costs. Naturally, this puts very high demands on the optical properties of water at the deployment site. Ideally, the water should exhibit minimal photon extinction and scattering to optimize the light yield and timing needed for reconstructing neutrino-induced Cherenkov light flashes. In addition, a low light background from natural undersea sources such as bioluminescence and K40 radioactive decay is necessary for achieving high sensitivity to neutrino events. In order to evaluate the proposed site for P-ONE, two pathfinder missions have been deployed successfully, one in 2018 and the other in 2020. In this presentation we will highlight the results from the first mission that was primarily aimed at evaluating the optical properties of the site in terms of absorption, scattering, and backgrounds.

Cumberland Sound, host to a commercially viable fish population in the deepest depths, is a large embayment on the southeast coast of Baffin Island that opens to Davis Strait. Conductivity, temperature, and depth profiles were collected during three summer field seasons (2011–2013), and two moorings were deployed during 2011–2012. Within the sound, salinity increases with increasing depth while water temperature cools reaching a minimum of −1.49°C at roughly 100 m. Below 100 m, the water becomes both warmer and saltier. Temperature‐salinity curves for each year followed a similar pattern, but the entire water column in Cumberland Sound cooled from 2011 to 2012, and then warmed through the summer of 2013. Even though the sound's maximum depth is over a kilometer deeper than its sill, water in the entire sound is well oxygenated. A comparison of water masses within the sound and in Davis Strait shows that, above the sill, the sound is flooded with cold Baffin Island Current water following an intermittent geostrophic flow pattern entering the sound along the north coast and leaving along the south. Below the sill, replenishment is infrequent and includes water from both the Baffin Island Current and the West Greenland Current. Deep water replenishment occurred more frequently on spring tides, especially in the fall of 2011. Although the sound's circulation is controlled by outside currents, internal water modifying processes occur such as estuarine flow and wind‐driven mixing.