ALTHOUGH recognised in scientific circles around the world for his geological expertise, Steve Blasco is probably best known to residents as the man who, alongside Teddy Tucker, unearthed a sunken cedar forest off the island - positive evidence that sea levels here were once 30 feet lower.

An adviser to the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI), Mr. Blasco was on the island last week, speaking on global warming and its effects, showing, for the first time, the film he and Mr. Tucker made to document their find and chatting with Mid-Ocean News reporter HEATHER WOOD.

Q: What exactly do you do?

A: I work with the Geological Survey of Canada as a marine geologist. And I work for the Federal Government, the Department of Natural Resources. If they say we have a problem in the Arctic or the Great Lakes or wherever, I go off and work on that problem.

I've been doing it for 25 years. Most of my time is devoted to studying the effects of water level changes. I'm very interested in the impact of climate change, of global warming, on our society.

Q: How did you become involved with the BUEI and its sea rise research?

A: Ten years ago, I was asked to be an adviser to the Institute and provide advice on geological issues and new exhibits. As I began to put together the story and the history of Bermuda - reading about it, (talking) with (people from such places as) the Bermuda Aquarium Museum & Zoo and the Bermuda Biological Station for Research - I began to realise there was a growing concern about sea level rise and its impact on the island.

I'd already been confronted with this in Nova Scotia. It was research that was not being conducted elsewhere on the island. So we started the programme a couple years ago to investigate evidence that the sea level was much lower - the cedar forest is an example and the drowned lake at Ferry Reach.

Once you can date them, you can get an idea of how fast sea levels are coming up. The rate at which it rises, controls the rate at which both our countries have to cope.

Q: What problems had you faced in Nova Scotia that so familiarised you with Bermuda's plight?

A: As a scientist, my research is really related to understanding the geologic history of the sea floor, which leads to trying to understand the history of sea level changes. Because (Nova Scotia and Bermuda) share the same part of the Atlantic Ocean, we're subject to very similar (conditions).

If we go back 18,000 years, when sea levels were 350 feet lower, a huge area of Nova Scotia was exposed to dry land and around Bermuda, the whole top of the sea mount was exposed.

In Bermuda, the sea mount is stable. In Nova Scotia, the land is actually sinking, so over time, the impact of hurricanes can be more devastating. Once we understand what storms can do, we can do a much better job of protecting and engineering the shoreline.

Q: What factors do you consider in establishing protection?

A: When you rebuild, do you rebuild exactly where you were? If you're building a new structure, do you put it right on the water, or do you set it back further from the coast? Do you put a different kind of breakwater design in, or protection along the coastline? What can you do that minimises the impact in the future?

All around the world we're still learning how to do a better job of that. Bermuda is starting to move ahead - the coastal erosion study initiated by your Government; by examining the ways and means of remedying and where should Bermuda go. Your Government's being very proactive in trying to set the stage for the future. This is good. And we're trying to do the same in Nova Scotia.

Q: Why are countries just now paying attention to changing water levels?

A: There's been a general trend over the last 20 years where the amount of damage being caused by hurricanes and (other storms) is increasing. For example, if you go along the coastline today there are scars all around the island where you've actually lost bedrock.

Fabian had major impact on coastal roads. There was a lot of bedrock erosion which is very unusual. You can actually see - you know, the light tan colour - where pieces of bedrock, the core of the island, have actually eroded away. And you don't replace that.

It's not like before, where mostly sand would get eroded away and would come back. We're into a new phase of damage. My impression in talking to people is that they don't recall this happening in the past and it's all believed to be in response to climate change, to global warming.

Storms are becoming more effective at damaging coastlines around the world. Bermuda is not unique but it's a small island and we need to protect it.

Q: You mentioned that you were experiencing similar problems in Nova Scotia?

A: I have a project in the Great Lakes system where we actually have the reverse problem because our climate has changed. It's become more arid and so we get a lot more evaporation and, we have water loss.

Rather than sea levels going up, water levels in the Great Lakes of Canada and the United States have actually dropped by four, four-and-a-half feet. It's causing all kinds of problems for navigation. Imagine if you've got a yacht club and all of a sudden lose four to five feet in an area that's shallow.

All of a sudden your moorings and everything are all on dry land. In Bermuda, you lost 1,000 or so hotel beds because of Hurricane Fabian. In (the Lake areas), revenue has been lost where we have yacht clubs and moorings that are now not accessible.

Cottagers could once draw water from the Great Lakes for supply. Now they have hoses that have to go out two or three hundred feet to reach the water because the levels have dropped. It's the reverse problem but,nonetheless, it causes hardship commercially and recreationally.

So we're doing research in the Great Lakes to try to understand at what rate the water is falling, what the impact is, what can we do to mitigate it and what to do in the future.

Q: What other projects are you working on at the moment?

A: I spent August and September working in the Canadian Arctic, just east of Alaska where Canada and Alaska join. We had a two-month programme on board a research vessel to study the effect of ice.

The Arctic Ocean is covered in ice and (it) moves around, presses together, forms huge ridges and cuts great, huge gouges, grooves, into the ocean floor. (We're trying to determine how) to move gas. One of the proposals is to run it through a pipeline along the ocean floor from Alaska to Canada and from Canada down into the United States markets.

The concern is, how deep do you bury the pipe so that it's protected from being damaged by these huge ice cubes? So that you don't lose the gas, or damage the pipe.

Q: What's the Arctic like during the summer months?

A: The temperatures never went above 40 degrees and they never went below about 30. We had very high winds from the north - normally we get winds from the south - so it was very cold as the wind blew off the ice.

We got snow every week; a light dusting which is not (typical for that time of year). I visit once a year and normally it's not quite that cold in August and September. I'm actually going back in November, to speak at a conference in Yellowknife on the geology of the Arctic.

Q: When it's that cold I can't imagine being too interested in sightseeing. What do you do during downtime?

A: It's really a 24-hour job. It costs $10,000 to $15,000 per day for a research vessel and so it goes for 24 hours and you're constantly planning your programme because just where you want to go, ice (appears) and you've got to go somewhere else.

But you do get downtime. I generally sleep. In your off-hours you socialise with the people you're working with and, of course, we do work out of a town, so we get to meet some of the local people and I quite like that. It's a little different.

Q: How often do you visit Bermuda?

A: I come twice a year - every October for the meeting of the International Advisory Board for the BUEI, and then we come in May to do field work. We work off Miss Wendy, Teddy Tucker's boat, and do our surveying of the ocean floor, collecting samples for analysis.

Q: Have you always been interested in oceanography?

A: I was going to become an explosives expert. I was going to go underground and set explosives to mines because I knew I could make lots of money. But after doing it for a summer, I began to realise I'd probably kill myself within a few years because you have to be very precise. You have to wire it all correctly and I was sure that I was going to do it wrong and that would be the end of me.

I was very interested in geology and had a colleague in university and she was interested in oceanography and I was interested in her. (I figured) that I had to learn something about oceanography to enhance the relationship.

The relationship never went very far but I learned a lot about oceanography and my next summer job was spent working on the Great Lakes. I started there and was then hired to look at problems in the Arctic and in the Lakes and I've been there ever since and it was because of that, that BUEI approached me as an adviser.

Q: You were studying sea level change before it presented a problem to coastal regions?

A: We were studying it because geologically, we've always been interested in the fact that sea level was once 350 feet lower. It was a geological curiosity, for example, how much ocean water was tied up as ice, as glaciers.

Canada was mostly covered with glaciers of a mile or two thick. That's a huge amount of ocean water tied up as ice once you (factor) in these great glaciers that for 10,000 years moved across North America, Russia and Europe. And then as the glaciers melted, the water level obviously came up (but) it's still not clear, the rate at which it melted and the rate at which sea levels (changed).

Initially, we were only interested in what was happening with the melting of the glaciers. Now we know the climate's warming. As climate warms, the atmosphere warms and the surface waters of the ocean warm. And when they warm, they expand and take up more room. And as they take up more room, they creep up our shoreline.

So wherever sea level is increasing, it's expected it will increase a foot and a half over the next century. If you add a foot and a half of water, and then you have a hurricane, a hurricane can be more damaging.

So the question is how do you protect? What kind of processes do you go through to protect the land and the shoreline? We evolved from an interesting geological phenomenon, into a real world problem.

Q: What's the greatest problem you've been called to solve?

A: The most difficult is the one we're working on now. The one in the Arctic. The ocean floor in the Arctic where I am is frozen solid for 2,000 feet - ice as if you've taken a block and put it in your freezer.

So there's 2,000 feet of sediments below the ocean floor that are frozen. Underneath all that is oil and gas and they want to produce (them) through that 2,000 feet of frozen sediment. When they produce oil it's hot and when it comes up, it's going to melt those sediments.

So the question is, how much will they melt? And if you put a structure on top to produce the oil, once the sediments melt, will it sink into the bottom? It's a really difficult problem. I think we've now figured out how the ice got there, how the sediments were frozen. It turns out that the area was dry land and, when Arctic conditions prevailed, the land surface froze all the way down to 2,000 feet.

We first had to determine how much is frozen and why. From there, we can figure out what will happen to the sediments if we melt them. We haven't quite solved the problem. That's been one of the big challenges - that, and trying to understand how deep the ice cuts into the ocean floor.

It's amazing the ice is so strong it can cut a groove of ten 15 feet. And it moves like a plough. So if you have pipeline (with) gas or oil on the sea floor, the ice could come along and destroy the pipe.

So the question that's being asked is how deeply should we bury the pipeline? We need to dig a big trench and put the pipe in the trench and see what happens. But we need to know how deep. It's an interesting issue.

Q: Where else have your travels taken you?

A: I've been all over the world. Between research programmes and giving talks at different conferences across Canada and the United States, (I'm) on the road for about half of the year. I've done a little bit of work in Japan, I taught a course for the United Nations in China in the early '90s, I've been to Moscow to work with the Russian scientists who worked in the Arctic.

I've been all over Norway, I've visited a few ports in Greenland and I have been lucky enough to study the geology of the three Rivieras. Most of everything I study is on the ocean floor but in the Rivieras, because of the mountains being built, a lot of geology that was on the ocean floor is now above land.

It's much easier to study marine geology on land and there aren't many places you can do that. I spent two months at the North Pole working out of an insulated tent. There were 26 of us. We stayed for 62 days, 12 hours, 19 minutes and 35 seconds. It was c-c-c-cold. The temperature was 40 below.

We were on a drifting ice (shelf) that over the two months we were there, moved several miles. We cut holes in the ice and lowered our equipment down to collect images of the sea floor. Right in the middle of the Arctic Ocean there's a huge mountain range right on the sea floor.

Our goal was to try and understand what sort of mountain range it was. A lot of people thought it was a bunch of volcanoes, but it turned out to be a piece of land that got stuck there. Very unusual.