Portable power stations have moved beyond simply charging phones and laptops. As more people look for backup power for home appliances, RVs, outdoor equipment and emergency situations, the useful question is no longer just how many USB ports a power station has. It is whether the system has enough capacity, output power and charging flexibility to handle demanding equipment without becoming impractical to move.

The SolarPlay Q3600 is designed around that idea. It combines a 3,840Wh LiFePO4 battery with up to 3,600W of AC output, 2,000W solar input and multiple charging interfaces. The result is a large-format power station aimed at users who need considerably more than a conventional portable battery can provide.

A 3,840Wh Battery Changes What a Portable Power Station Can Do

The Q3600’s biggest selling point is its 3,840Wh battery capacity.

That amount of stored energy gives the unit a very different role from smaller power banks or compact camping batteries. Instead of being primarily a device for keeping phones and laptops alive, the Q3600 is intended to support a wider range of equipment, including household appliances, workshop tools, RV equipment and other higher-power loads.

SolarPlay uses a LiFePO4 battery architecture for the Q3600. The manufacturer’s specifications list more than 4,000 charge cycles while retaining 80% of the original capacity, although real-world battery longevity will naturally depend on charging habits, temperature and load conditions.

For users considering a power station as an emergency backup, this distinction matters. A large capacity does not automatically mean unlimited runtime, because actual operating time depends heavily on the wattage of the connected equipment. A 3,840Wh battery can therefore be thought of as a substantial energy reserve rather than a guarantee of a specific number of hours.

3,600W of AC Output Makes It Suitable for More Demanding Loads

The Q3600 is rated for 3,600W continuous AC output and uses a pure sine wave inverter. The European version provides 220–240V AC output at 50Hz/60Hz.

This is one of the areas where the Q3600 separates itself from smaller portable power stations.

A 3,600W output ceiling gives users considerably more room for equipment with higher power requirements. That can be useful for appliances and tools that would simply be outside the practical range of a compact 1,000W-class station.

However, the sensible approach is still to check the rated and startup power of each appliance before connecting it. Motors, compressors and heating appliances can behave differently from their advertised average consumption, so the station’s maximum output should not be treated as a universal guarantee for every device.

Solar Charging Is One of the Q3600’s Most Interesting Features

The Q3600 is not limited to wall charging. Its solar input can accept up to 2,000W, giving the system a much stronger off-grid charging capability than many smaller portable power stations.

SolarPlay states that the Q3600 can reach a full charge in approximately 1.5 hours when AC and solar charging are combined, rather than implying that a 3,840Wh battery can always be fully recharged from solar alone in that time.

The European model also provides adjustable AC charging levels of 400W, 800W, 1,200W, 1,600W and 2,200W. This gives users more control over charging speed and power demand depending on the situation.

That flexibility could be particularly useful during longer outdoor trips. Instead of treating the battery as a one-time energy source, users can recharge it during the day and use the stored energy later when solar production falls.

Multiple Output Types Make It More Versatile

Another strength of the Q3600 is the range of connection options.

The specification includes AC outlets alongside a 12V cigarette-lighter output, an XT60 port, DC outputs, USB-A ports and several USB-C connections. One USB-C port supports up to 100W PD output, making it suitable for higher-powered compatible devices such as laptops.

The Banggood listing describes the product as having 17 outputs, while SolarPlay’s current product page lists 15 output ports. Because the two sources present the port count differently, buyers should check the exact configuration of the package and regional version before ordering.

More importantly, the variety of outputs means the Q3600 can serve several types of equipment at the same time rather than functioning as a single-purpose AC battery.

UPS Support Adds a Practical Home-Backup Role

The Q3600 also supports a UPS function, which makes it more interesting for use around the home.

According to the listed specifications, the system can switch to battery power in less than 20 milliseconds under its specified UPS conditions. This is intended to reduce interruption when mains power disappears.

That feature can be useful for equipment that needs a more consistent power source, such as networking hardware, computers or selected electronic devices.

It should not, however, be confused with a dedicated enterprise-grade UPS system. Users with particularly sensitive equipment should check the manufacturer’s UPS specifications and the equipment’s own power requirements before relying on the Q3600 as their only backup solution.

Large Capacity Comes With a Real Weight Trade-Off

The Q3600 is portable, but it is not lightweight.

The listed bare-device weight is approximately 42.2kg, with dimensions of about 608 × 289 × 456mm.

That makes the built-in wheels and telescopic handle particularly important. The Q3600 is better understood as a movable power station rather than something most users will casually carry by hand over a long distance.

For an RV, garage, workshop, campsite or home backup location, this design makes sense. Users can position the unit where it is needed and roll it into place instead of repeatedly lifting the entire 42kg system.

Designed for Home Backup, RVs and Off-Grid Use

The Q3600’s specifications suggest several practical use cases.

For home backup, the large battery and high AC output provide a way to keep selected appliances and electronics operating during outages.

For RV use, the combination of AC, 12V and other DC outputs can reduce the need to carry separate power solutions for different types of equipment.

For off-grid applications, the 2,000W solar input becomes especially important because it allows the Q3600 to function as part of a rechargeable solar-based power system rather than relying entirely on the electrical grid.

Outdoor users should still consider the unit’s 42.2kg weight and physical size when planning transportation. Its wheels make movement easier, but this is not a lightweight backpacking power station.

What About Noise and Protection?

SolarPlay lists the Q3600 with multiple battery-management protections covering conditions such as overcharging, over-discharging, over-current and short circuits. The Banggood specifications also list a working temperature range of approximately -10°C to 45°C for the Q3600.

The product is also listed with safety and transport-related certifications including CE, FCC, RoHS, PSE, UN38.3 and MSDS documentation.

These features do not eliminate the need to use the power station within its operating limits, but they show that the Q3600 is designed as a substantial energy-storage system rather than simply a large battery pack.

SolarPlay Q3600 Specifications

Specification	SolarPlay Q3600
Battery capacity	3,840Wh
Battery type	LiFePO4 / LFP
AC output	3,600W
AC voltage	220–240V
AC waveform	Pure sine wave
Solar input	Up to 2,000W
AC charging	Up to 2,200W
UPS	Less than 20ms under specified conditions
USB-C	Up to 100W on dedicated PD port
DC output	12V options
Weight	About 42.2kg
Dimensions	About 608 × 289 × 456mm
Operating temperature	Approximately -10°C to 45°C

Specifications can vary by regional version or package, so buyers should verify the configuration before purchase.

Is the SolarPlay Q3600 Worth Considering?

SolarPlay Q3600 power station is not trying to win the portability contest by being small and light. Its appeal comes from the opposite direction.

The 3,840Wh battery, 3,600W AC output and 2,000W solar input give it the kind of electrical capacity that makes sense for home backup, RV trips, workshops and longer off-grid use. The multiple output types and UPS function further expand its potential applications.

The biggest compromise is its size and 42.2kg weight. That means the Q3600 works best when it can be rolled into position rather than carried frequently.

For buyers who prioritize large energy storage, high output power and solar recharge capability over lightweight portability, the Q3600 offers a much more capable alternative to smaller portable power stations.

Before purchasing, users should also confirm the exact regional version, output configuration and included accessories, particularly because the current Banggood listing and SolarPlay’s own product page differ in how they describe the number of output ports.

The post SolarPlay Q3600 Brings 3840Wh Capacity and 3600W Output to Portable Backup Power appeared first on IGeeKphone China Phone, Tablet PC, VR, RC Drone News, Reviews.

In a catch-up interview after a lost CES interview, Jeff Gadway, SVP for Clicks discusses the Power Keyboard, a universal MagSafe-style Bluetooth keyboard and power bank for iPhone, Android, tablets, TVs, and more. He also details the Clicks Communicator, a smartphone built around physical keys, purposeful communication, productivity, security, and the idea of a task-focused […]

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In the Mapcreator booth at NAB in Las Vegas, Julia Schellekens provides an update on their service that delivers detailed maps for news and other organizations who want to clearly show what is happening where. With a wide array of export and animation capabilities to help drive home the information, it is almost certain that you have seen their product in use no matter where in the world you are. 

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If you’ve been using computers for a long time, you might recall the Apple II and Apple IIgs, two of Apple’s early computers that were before they had fully committed to the Macintosh platform. While there were plenty of productivity apps and programming tools for Apple II and Apple IIgs, there were also a whole ... Read More

The post Play Any Apple II or Apple IIgs Game in Your Browser appeared first on OS X Daily.

Paleontologists have described a new genus of small, bird-like dinosaur that lived in what is now New Mexico approximately 73 million years ago.

The post New Troodontid Dinosaur Genus Identified from Fossil Bone Found Decades Ago in New Mexico appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

The almost-natural-language notepad calculator Soulver’s latest release adds better tools for calculating durations or intervals between dates and times, planning travel itineraries, tracking inflation, finding distances, performing bandwidth math, and splitting restaurant bills or other expenses. That’s not all, but a good starting list. Should it do all these things? A point we could argue about! But many of the features it offered in the past, and several of the new ones it provides, previously required one or more web searches to find a tool or to pull together disparate information. That’s welcome.

Soulver 4’s release comes at an interesting time, when many people have turned to chatbots and Google’s search dialog—and soon will turn to Siri AI—to answer questions that are better written out or spoken than described as just numbers or operators.

This significant update succeeds in bringing a sort of authoritative basis to stuff you need to calculate or convert. Behind the scenes, there’s no inference or autocompletion—it’s numbers, baby, all the way down. However, the developers aren’t unaware of the AI glow-up. They’ve addressed it in an interesting way, making it easy for agents to ask questions of Soulver!

How many bushels in a peck as I travel a furlong faster than a parsec?

Soulver has filled a gap for me in my calculating needs since I dug into the subject in 2015. While I love PCalc and use it for regular and advanced calculator needs, Soulver is where I go when I need to mix things up.¹

PCalc and Soulver offer overlapping Venn diagrams of what’s possible in number space, but they are distinctly different beasts at heart. Where PCalc mostly calculates within a calculator-style interface, Soulver mostly offers a way to make sense of numbers, units, percentages, time, intervals, and much more. I think of it as a “take stuff in various units or other formulations and then produce an output in a way I want” tool.

I sometimes go days without using Soulver, and then find myself typing in an array of calculations. For instance, as a tiny print book publisher (it’s just me), I am often dealing with the weight of paper, the weight of books, the cost of shipping, and other variables. The number of sheets I have in some of my Numbers documents is alarming, but I often need conversion that sounds like a story problem: “The printer in Canada is giving me paper weight in gsm (grams per square meter). I know the book’s area per page (typically in inches). I need to calculate the weight of 1,000 copies in pounds.” I can type the query faster than I describe it. For instance, I need to estimate the weight of a new book based on the weight and page count of one I am holding:

(6 inches x 9 inches) / (5.875 inches × 8.25 inches) × (352 / 204) × 302g in lbs

Version 4 continues to offer all of what I consider its basics. You type out numbers and units with operators between them. You can set variables, add comments, and drag results into subsequent lines as part of further calculations. You can force-convert units, as above, telling it to use a metric unit instead of imperial, or to use a different unit scale. Say you want inches instead of feet, or kilograms instead of pounds.

Because it’s a notepad, your work is persistent. You can use Soulver to create the equivalent of tabs within sheets, collected into a “sheetbook.” This is somewhat like the Notes app, and it lets you organize calculations into projects and sub-projects. I have a monolithic sheet I use for essentially everything. Soulver can store files locally or sync via iCloud.

Where version 4 starts to diverge from previous releases is in what feels like a baroque set of options that aren’t stapled on, but most require a bit more effort to get the nuance and make them work for you.

How much did Minions & Monsters make in 1940 dollars?

It took me a few weeks to write this review, quite honestly, because every time I looked at the upgrade page, my eyes glazed over as I thought about how to best present this. I mean, the release notes page is broken into ten sections. The answer—which didn’t require Soulver 4—is that I need to cherry-pick more than usual for an app to give you the flavor.

Here are a few new elements that will keep me away from search engines and other resources more than any other:

Inflation calculation. As a historian, and as somebody who just wants to use his numeracy to interpret the world, I find myself jumping for an inflation calculator all the time.² You need an online source, as it has to have a table of the historical values to provide the correct cumulative percentage between two years or dates. Because of the relatively high inflation in developed nations since the start of the pandemic, I find myself trying to understand why I’m staring at a jar of peanut butter and can’t comprehend what it costs now. (Soulver currently does annual inflation calculations, but will add monthly data in a future update.)

It’s a date: Date math is the hardest math, in my experience. Soulver previously let you perform the magic of subtracting one date from another or adding days to a date to figure out the right month, day, and year. In the update, you can do more tricks, like figuring out work hours (set by default, and you can change) in periods of time or differences, calculating relative to cultural and religious holidays, finding the number of daylight hours in a particular place, and (as should be obvious so far) much more. As a person of the Jewish faith, I honestly never know when Hanukkah starts, and Soulver doesn’t appear to know either. (Soulver says Hanukkah is coming in a future update.) However, it does include Christmas and Ramadan; there’s no list of this category, but you can look in Soulver: Settings: Dates & Times and click Public holidays to see that list, set by your region.

How far away? I don’t know about you, but I regularly want to know the distance between two places, sometimes nearby, sometimes far away. Soulver 4 lets you ask, distance between [place name] and [place name], and get the proper curvature-adjusted distance. (I have a proviso about this that you can read at the end.)

How long to upload? I’ve used Soulver for bandwidth and file-transfer time calculations since I first installed it. With the latest release, you don’t have to punch in nearly as many units or conversions to get an answer to a question like time to upload 1TB at 900Mbps. (Answer: 2.47 hours.)

Elements you’ll find added or improved that I haven’t found a particular use for yet but seem significant include:

• Better formatting: You can highlight expression lines with one of eight preset colors, as well as add divider lines. This makes data in sheets easier to parse. In addition to the previously available export function, Soulver 4 lets you email sheets to yourself with full HTML formatting.

• Trip planning: I’ll be honest that this feature looks powerful, but requires breaking out of the Soulver mold, as it uses a multi-line approach by defining the top and bottom of the trip range as a “time point” via the contextual menu. However, because of how it calculates time intervals and provides warnings if the duration you’ve set doesn’t fit, you can use it for short itineraries (getting to the airport on time) or planning a long trip.

• Tags workflow: Coders are amazing people, and you can see that in the simplicity and complexity of this tagging feature. When you tag a line with a hashtag and a tag name, the associated value can be summed, and operations can be performed on it. For instance, you can tag everyone’s individual orders on a dinner bill, add in tax and tip, and then have it divvied out. But that’s just one example. A spreadsheet could be easier, but it can also be overkill.

• A command-line interface: If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t like a GUI, a command-line approach to Soulver might fit you, but the developers created it mostly to allow a simple way for you to have various other things, whether scripts, editor plug-ins, or coding agents, use Soulver as a kind of engine of numerical accuracy.

Weather goest thou?

Soulver is a $59 one-time purchase and gives you access to Mac, iPhone, and iPad versions. (There’s a 60-day free trial to test it out.) While that might seem high, I think given inflation—wink, wink—that’s comparable to the $30–$40 we might pay for a single-platform great utility in 2010! The iPhone version can be purchased on its own for $15. Soulver 3 owners pay $29 to upgrade to version 4. You can also get Soulver 4 via the $15 a month Setapp subscription, and have full access to it and over 330 other apps.

But you might run into one not-quite-hidden subscription option if you make certain weather or stock queries. With the App Store version of Soulver, $26 a year gives you access to what the app labels Live Weather (a number of current metrics), Live & Historical Stocks (a deep trove of data and real-time), and Inline Knowledge Assistant (which lets you use Wolfram|Alpha). It’s included at no extra cost for Setapp subscribers.

I ran afoul of an aspect of this in testing, as Soulver (as of 4.0.2) included about the top 700 most populous cities and leaned on Wolfram for more, but didn’t prompt me as to why it couldn’t identify a city I mentioned. Developer Zac Cohan said the next minor update will add dynamic place-name lookups as part of the base price to reduce confusion and better fit the user base.

This subscription is not at all necessary to use Soulver 4, and Zac says the vast majority of Soulver users don’t need it. However, the cost to provide the data and services is too high to include for all users, hence the subscription to defray those costs.

Just 10 days after beginning its first trial operations, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has announced that scientists operating its new High Intensity heavy-ion Accelerator Facility (HIAF) have successfully detected the “extremely rare” hafnium-153 isotope.

The international research team behind the achievement said the hafnium-153 observation is the first physics result achieved since the facility’s commissioning, which highlights its ability to aid scientists in exploring the “boundaries of the nuclear landscape.”

Detection of 10 Hafnium-153 Isotopes Represents Facility’s First “Physics Result”

According to a press release from the team, which was led by the State Key Laboratory of Heavy Ion Science and Technology affiliated with the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), exploring unknown isotopes and determining the limits of nuclear existence “are key frontiers of nuclear physics.”

Located in Huizhou in South China’s Guangdong Province, the HIAF facility is a world-class next-generation heavy-ion accelerator specifically designed to explore these “key frontiers” at extremely high energies.

To search for the rare hafnium-153 isotope, HIAF’s Booster Ring (Bring) delivered a primary beam of bismuth-209 onto agraphite target. Due to the energies involved, the collision produced radioactive nuclei through a process called projectile fragmentation reactions.

To maintain purity, the team purified and transported it via the facility’s High-rigidity Radioactive Ion Beam Line (HIRIBL). Next, the beam is injected into the Spectrometer Ring. Here, the scientists were able to perform “isochronous mass spectrometry” to make precision measurements.

Although the facility’s first physics result resulted in what the team described as an “extremely low production cross section,” the experiment was still a success. After a close count, the team identified spectral signatures for ten hafnium-153 ions.

Critically, the team’s detection was independently replicated at Japan’s Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory (RIBF) at RIKEN, which also reported the observation of hafnium-153. The team said the dual detections provide mutual confirmation and “further highlight the significance of this isotope in nuclear physics research.”

An Important Advance in Probing the Limits of Nuclear Existence

When discussing the implications of the facility’s rare isotope detection, the team said that the results suggest that hafnium-153 is either a bound or weakly bound isotope, which matches predictions from nuclear mass models made before the experiments. The researchers also noted that this isotope is located within the neutron-deficient heavy nuclear region, so its detection offers scientists “a unique window into the evolution of nuclear structure and the limits of nuclear stability.”

“Its observation and precise measurement provide critical experimental information for testing nuclear models and advancing our understanding of nuclear structure,” they explained.

Beyond the scientific value, the team noted that the detection showcases the facility’s capabilities mere days into its operational phase. For example, HIAF’s high-intensity heavy-ion beams demonstrated the ability to enhance the production of rare isotopes. The facility’s high-performance beam line also successfully enabled efficient separation of the nuclei of interest, while its SRing’s isochronous mass spectrometry provides “single-ion”  level sensitivity for precision identification and measurement of rare nuclei such as hafnium-153.

Moving forward, the team said that further improvements in beam intensity and increases in experimental efficiency are expected to make HIAF an increasingly important tool for discovering new isotopes. They also note the facility’s goals of aiding the investigation of nuclear properties “under extreme conditions” for such fundamental research.

“This new achievement not only marks an important advance in probing the limits of nuclear existence but also opens the door to broader scientific exploration at HIAF,” they explained.

The study “Discovery of isotope hafnium-153 near the proton drip line via isochronous mass spectrometry: extending the nuclear landscape with HIAF” was published in Science Bulletin.

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and has spent the last six years as Associate News Editor and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on X, learn about his books at plainfiction.com, or email him at christopher@thedebrief.org

A Adobe anunciou hoje o lançamento de um plugin unificado para o ChatGPT, reunindo mais de 70 ferramentas criativas da seu suíte diretamente na interface do chatbot por inteligência artificial (IA) da OpenAI.

O plugin conta com ferramentas de aplicativos da Adobe que já possuíam integração com o ChatGPT, além de novos recursos do Adobe Express, Photoshop, Firefly, Premiere, Acrobat, Lightroom, Illustrator, InDesign e Adobe Stock, permitindo que os usuários possam criar peças publicitárias ou adaptar um vídeo para diferentes redes sociais sem precisar alternar entre aplicativos.

A novidade faz parte da estratégia da Adobe de expandir a compatibilidade dos seus recursos com as ferramentas de IA generativa; em junho, a empresa já havia mencionado que levaria esses recursos inclusive para rivais do ChatGPT, como o Claude. No Copilot, no Gemini e no Slack eles chegarão “em breve”, segundo a empresa.

Big news: a new Adobe plugin is now available in @OpenAI's @ChatGPT! 70+ tools, including @Photoshop, @AdobeFirefly, @Lightroom, and @Acrobat, all in one chat.

Mock up your photos. Repurpose a video for any platform. Turn a template into a polished PDF. Learn more:… pic.twitter.com/I1qrBctKyr

— Adobe (@Adobe) August 6, 2026

Ainda conforme a desenvolvedora, a novidade foi pensada para “facilitar e agilizar a transformação de ideias em conteúdo de alta qualidade dentro do ChatGPT”, mas a empresa destaca que, para necessidades criativas “mais profundas”, os seus aplicativos nativos seguem sendo a primeira opção.

Questionada pela AI Magazine se o uso dos recursos incorporados ao ChatGPT poderia rivalizar com o uso dos aplicativos nativos, a líder de produtos de IA agêntica da Adobe, Deepti Pradeep, respondeu o seguinte:

Dentro do ChatGPT, a experiência é transformadora: em vez de escolher plugins da Adobe separadamente, os usuários podem experimentar uma única experiência da Adobe que traz o Photoshop, Acrobat, Express e mais juntos.

Nós acreditamos que a consolidação adiciona mais valor aos usuários do ChatGPT. Fora dele, nossos aplicativos nativos permanecem essenciais para um controle mais profundo, preciso e avançado dos fluxos de trabalho.

Para iniciar, é possível utilizar algumas funcionalidades do plugin como convidado, embora a Adobe recomende fazer login com a sua conta para “desbloquear recursos adicionais”.

O plugin da Adobe já está disponível tanto no app quanto na versão web do ChatGPT.

You’re heading to that beach vacation. Or maybe like us in Washington State, you’re sneezing and coughing from the sunbaked wildfire smoke.

Source

Abrindo o mês de agosto com a nossa seleção de promoções na App Store para esta segunda-feira!

Cardinal Land, criado pela DogoTogo, é um quebra-cabeças com o adicional de também ser um aplicativo educacional — e, por isso, o nosso destaque do dia.

Combine as peças coloridas de diferentes formatos e crie imagens de animais. Uma vez completada a figura, fatos interessantes do animal são apresentados e podem ser compartilhados facilmente com quem você quiser.

Explore sete continentes em dezenas de fases e desafie as suas habilidades em diferentes modos de jogo. Complete rapidamente as tarefas e ganhe estrelas. Compartilhe as imagens dos animais com seu Apple Watch e transforme-as em mostradores!

Confira um vídeo:

Aproveite a oferta e boa diversão! 🦁

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Abaixo outros jogos/apps que, juntos, somam quase R$170 em descontos:

Jogos

Jogo musical.

Jogo de estratégia.

Aplicativos

Para relaxar.

Utilitário para hábitos.

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Aproveite as ofertas e até amanhã! Vale lembrar que elas são sempre por tempo limitado, então é bom correr. 🚀

Text expansion utility adds support for importing snippets from more apps. ($29.99 annual subscription, free update, 48.2 MB, macOS 13+)

Anyone who has used the Internet in recent years is probably used to encountering telltale signs of LLM prompting that lazy users sometimes forget to remove from their AI-generated pabulum. But a Canadian legislator took that idea to an embarrassing new level this week, reading an apparent LLM prompt instruction into the record during a floor speech.

Bill Oliver, a Progressive Conservative Party member of the legislative assembly of New Brunswick, noted in a speech last month that "One of the dangers associated with creating advocacy offices is that citizens often develop expectations that exceed the powers actually granted to those offices." He then went on to say out loud that "here’s a more natural, flowing version of that section that reads like a legislative speech rather than a series of short points," a line with all the hallmarks of an LLM presenting an alternative style option in response to a prompt.

The odd reading went more or less unnoticed at the time, but video of the remarks started spreading around social media networks like Reddit and Threads earlier this week. In Canada, the snafu is now getting mainstream attention from the likes of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and The Toronto Star, the latter of which called it a sign of "a growing divide in our society: between the elites, who are only too happy to delegate their duties to the Borg; and the masses, who find this objectionable."

Read full article

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NASA added a new X-59 test pilot to support the agency’s Quesst mission: Mike Lippert, a research test pilot based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.  

“This fulfills a lifelong dream of conducting airborne research and experimental flight test for NASA in the high desert — contributing to humankind’s understanding of the science of flight and the nature of the world around us,” Lippert said. 

Lippert will fly the X-59, along with the F-15 and F-18 support aircraft to monitor the quiet supersonic X-plane when it’s in the air. He joins Nils Larson and Jim “Clue” Less, who have been flying the X-59 since its first flight in October 2025.  

A South Carolina native, Lippert served 20 years with the U.S. Marine Corps before retiring last year as a lieutenant colonel. Like his fellow test pilots, he boasts an impressive flight resume, including logging more than 2,600 hours of flight time in 60 different types of aircraft.  

Lippert said he finds test pilot work especially rewarding. 

“For me, the joy of taking part in experimental flight test and airborne research is the experience of discovery and learning something new every day,” he said. “It is incredibly rewarding to be part of a team solving complex problems and venturing into the unknown, together.” 

Lippert spent the majority of his career flying the AV-8B Harrier operationally and serving as a test pilot in the F-35 program. He is also an aerospace engineer, earning a bachelor’s degree from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, and a Master of Science in flight test engineering from the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Additionally, he earned a Master of Science in systems engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.  

Lippert is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering at the University of Alabama Graduate School in Tuscaloosa, where his research focuses on high-speed gas dynamics, including supersonic and hypersonic fluid mechanics — complementing his work on the Quesst mission. 

Lippert is busy preparing for his role at NASA by flying training flights on support aircraft and spending time in the X-59 simulator. He is expected to begin flying the X-59 later this summer. 

More X-59 to Explore

Read more on the Quesst mission page.

The post Meet NASA’s New X-59 Test Pilot  appeared first on NASA Science.

Liopleurodon ferox is a short-necked marine reptile that patrolled the seas of what is now England and France some 163 million years ago.

The post Jurassic Pliosaur Liopleurodon Was Big, but Not as Big as Once Feared appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Apple:

You manage all the devices that appear in Xcode as run destinations using Device Hub.

Run your app on simulated devices in Device Hub to quickly evaluate new features and fix bugs, and to see how your interface works on devices that you don’t have physical access to. Run your app on physical devices to test features or services that have hardware dependencies or investigating performance issues. For more information, see Running your app on simulated or physical devices.

Fatbobman:

Device Hub is undoubtedly a major surprise. It integrates simulators, physical device management, system state testing, and dynamic size adjustment into a new workflow. Its impact on day-to-day development experience may be more direct than that of many individual APIs. That said, iPhone apps now also support dynamic size adjustment, which will bring new challenges for developers, especially in terms of data and state organization. Adapting to different sizes is not something that can be solved merely by relying on dynamic layout containers. In many scenarios, large and small sizes correspond to very different navigation logic.

Collin Allen (Mastodon):

Xcode 27 introduced, among other new features, a new Device Hub app for developers that takes the place of the Simulator app. Where Simulator relied on separate windows for each device, Device Hub brings them all together into a single window where each simulated device is the detail view from a source list of devices on the left. It’s a more organized approach, made necessary by the wide variety of platforms Apple and Apple platform app developers have to build and test against.

[…]

In releases prior to Xcode 27, you could resolve this by importing the root public certificate into the simulated OS. On iOS, this could be done by dragging and dropping the .cer file onto the Simulator device window. Nothing would appear to happen, but you could then navigate to Settings, General, About, Certificate Trust Settings and mark the certificate as trusted.

[…]

In Xcode 27 with Device Hub, this process is much more uniform. […] While this new process does require you to wrap certificates in an Apple Configurator profile, this is much more consistent with how Apple’s device management system works, as it relies on signed profiles with policies, not loose .cer files. And now, just by adding the .mobileconfig to the Profiles section of the device inspector, the embedded certificate is automatically marked as trusted, greatly speeding up installation on new virtual devices.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

I get what Apple is trying to do with the Device Hub, but it’s nowhere near as usable and as useful as the iOS Simulator (in this seed)

Adam Overholtzer:

Device Hub is missing the “pixel accurate” and “point accurate” zoom options and that’s not acceptable.

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Maybe someday the Simulator/Device Hub might even be able to output screenshots in the same orientation as the emulated device 😛

Steve Troughton-Smith:

Thanks to the remote control / screen sharing features of Device Hub, I can remotely navigate to Settings and start a software update on all my iOS27 devices without having to go collect them around the house 👌

Steve Troughton-Smith:

For all of Apple’s nonsense about adding iPhone Mirroring to the EU, the new Device Hub (iOS Simulator) lets you remote-control your physical iOS devices just fine. I don’t think the DMA has an opt-out for developer tools 😛

Steve Troughton-Smith:

It’s such a shame for now that Xcode 27’s Device Hub doesn’t support remote screen sharing with iOSes earlier than 27. I wish the screen sharing functionality was part of the developer disk image, and backported to iOS 26 and even iOS 18. Having a physical device plugged in somewhere is so much faster than booting a Simulator.

Previously:

• WWDC 2026 Links
• Xcode 27 Announced
• No Apple Intelligence or iPhone Mirroring in EU at Launch

Update (2026-06-26): Léo Natan:

Xcode 27’s “Device Hub” is a broken shitshow, but most importantly, it lacks the Debug menu, where you could toggle slow animations and simulate memory warnings. Apple works tirelessly to destroy any good tool they used to have.

He has a thread of issues. Hopefully these will be addressed before it’s out of beta.

Update (2026-07-01): Craig Hockenberry:

The Device Hub sometimes doesn’t kill CoreSimulator processes when you quit the app (not sure if this is a bug or intentional). Given that each device uses several hundred processes, the memory/processing impact is significant.

You’ll probably want to keep an eye on how many you have running: use right-click on the simulator in the list to “Shut Down” as necessary.

O Apple TV anunciou hoje que o ator Benicio del Toro fará sua estreia em um papel de destaque na série de comédia “Protective Custody”, futura produção estrelada e produzida por Ben Stiller que foi anunciada em maio deste ano.

A produção girará em torno de um financista desacreditado acusado de fraude em larga escala e colocado sob custódia. Na cadeia, ele se verá obrigado a lidar com a política da prisão, recuperar sua reputação e enfrentar as consequências de seus atos enquanto aguarda o julgamento.

Benicio Del Toro is set to make his leading comedy series debut on Apple TV.

Also starring and executive produced by Ben Stiller, and hailing from Emmy Award-winner Mike Judge, Emmy Award-winner Steve Hely and Dave King, comes a new series about a disgraced financier navigating… pic.twitter.com/3rglVYsR7C

— Apple TV (@AppleTV) July 22, 2026

“Protective Custody” também marcará o reencontro entre del Toro e Stiller, que já colaboraram na minissérie “Escape at Dannemora”. A produção marca, ainda, a estreia de Stiller como protagonista em uma série de comédia roteirizada, fora do formato de esquetes.

A produção será comandada por Steve Hely, Dave King e pelo diretor Mike Judge — que também serão roteiristas e showrunners. A produção executiva será de Stiller, John Lesher, Ben Silverman, Howard Owens, Rodney Ferrell, Michael Rotenberg, Oly Obst e Nanette Burstein.

O Apple TV está disponível no aplicativo Apple TV em mais de 100 países e regiões, seja em iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, Macs, dispositivos Android, smart TVs ou online — além de também estar em aparelhos como Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast com Google TV, consoles PlayStation e Xbox. O serviço custa R$29,90 por mês, com um período de teste gratuito de 7 dias. Por tempo limitado, quem comprar e ativar um novo iPhone, iPad, Apple TV ou Mac ganha 3 meses do Apple TV. Ele também faz parte do pacote de assinaturas da empresa, o Apple One.

NOTA DE TRANSPARÊNCIA: O MacMagazine recebe uma pequena comissão sobre vendas concluídas por meio de links deste post, mas você, como consumidor, não paga nada mais pelos produtos/serviços usando os nossos links de afiliado.

We started Hakai Magazine over 10 years ago because the ocean and its coastlines needed a voice. No other outlet was exclusively covering issues at the interface of sea and land—or of the marine world in general.

After all these years, most stories in the marine beat are as familiar to me as the liturgy I grew up reciting (and, like all lapsed Catholics, will never forget). Our reporting on climate change, fisheries, human-wildlife interactions, and deep-sea mining—and anything and everything about whales—borders on the ritualistic. But while liturgy rarely changes, science does, and so does our understanding of these issues. At Hakai, we’ve done our best to adapt—to share what’s new, what’s urgent, and what’s inspiring in ways that keep you, our readers, informed, engaged, and entertained.

Unlike those age-old religious texts, science is never set in stone; it’s a dynamic conversation. As environmental journalists, we play a role in that conversation, reflecting not just the facts but the humanity within them. When someone asked me what my overall takeaway is after a decade of editing a science magazine focused on oceans and coastlines, I thought first about our humanity, not our beat. One of the deeper meanings of humanity is recognizing our shared responsibility to each other and to nature itself. It’s this compassion—this humaneness—that the Hakai team has carried into our stories. We’ve contemplated how whales and humans talk, the beauty of an island too inhospitable for people, and seabirds’ relationship with fish, for example, to illustrate that we are all part of this fragile, interconnected planet.

We are a team of people—flawed and forgetful, but also hopeful and cheerful—with big hearts, motivated by the belief that, through journalism, we can make the world a little bit better. With every story we have produced, we’ve kept in mind the global conversation about various issues and have made an effort to write with enough depth and thoughtfulness to offer our readers moments of self-reflection, compassion, and connection. As critics rightfully point out, digital media and communication are nothing like face-to-face conversation. In the absence of human connection, our ability to experience those moments atrophies. Yet, despite all its downsides, digital media is how most of us share ideas, make sense of our lives, and attempt to make meaningful attachments.

At Hakai, we’ve done our best to ensure that what we have offered you through this digital space—our stories, our words, our images—carried the power to spark reflection, compassion, and connection. Over the past 10 years, I believe this team of imperfect people with big hearts has honored you, our audience, and the world we all love. And we’ll keep doing that in 2025 and beyond at biographic.com.

When a ship wrecks on an unfamiliar coastline, an already desperate situation is all the more dire. Blinded by the night, and lost, the captain and crew of the Puritan, a four-masted lumber schooner en route from San Francisco, California, to Port Gamble, Washington, in 1896, faced two agonizing options: abandon ship into the roiling sea and head toward shore through a rock-riddled shoal or stay aboard and hope the hull would hold.

Captain Atwood chose the latter and ordered his nine crewmen to lash themselves to the rigging to avoid slipping off the tilting deck and into the ocean’s frothing gullet. So bound, they waited until darkness slid into light. As the shoreline morphed into view on that November morning, the men got a sense of their position. The ship was pinioned to a reef, being rocked and hammered by the Pacific. The shore was tormentingly close, just 400 meters or so away, but the span too perilous to cross.

The Puritan had run aground on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, near Bonilla Point, about 110 kilometers west of Victoria. Today, the sobriquet “Graveyard of the Pacific” is hackneyed, but in the late 1800s, when colonial expansion was well underway in western North America, the graveyard—a stretch of coastline roughly from the Columbia River in the United States to northern Vancouver Island—acquired ships on the regular. In what probably seemed like an uninhabited middle of nowhere, Atwood and his men waited for a miracle. Luckily, they were actually in the inhabited middle of somewhere—a coastline that for millennia had been home to Indigenous peoples. Did the mariners think they were delirious when shadowy apparitions at the forest’s edge resolved into flesh-and-blood men and started wading toward the schooner?

Waist deep in the churning sea, the men tied a stone to the end of a fishing line and tossed it toward the crew. Toss, haul in. Toss, haul in. Toss, haul in. For almost eight hours, a newspaper later reported, they threw the line and the Puritan crew tried to catch it.

Finally, a crewman hooked the line and attached a heavier line to the smaller one. The rescuers then dragged the line to shore and secured it, allowing the crew to sling themselves to safety as if on a zipline. From there, the Indigenous men escorted the Puritan’s crew to a nearby shelter where they provided food and stayed with the men until help arrived.

Sixty kilometers up the coast and 128 years later, another rescue is underway. On a drippy, monochrome February afternoon, nine men on three boats scan the rocky shore of Trevor Channel near the small village of Bamfield. They’ve been alerted by a “pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan” call—marine radio lingo for an urgent but not life-threatening situation: “At one-six-zero-zero Pacific Standard Time, this station received a report of overdue kayakers in the vicinity of Trevor Channel, Robbers Pass,” coast guard radio reported. Three kayakers missed their scheduled check-in call and are considered overdue.

From a boat nearby, Thomas Kerr, senior search and rescue program officer with the Canadian Coast Guard, watches the boats watching the shore. He’s the one who instigated this search an hour earlier, when he tossed three bald, floppy, PFD-wearing manikins into the water, securing them in place with small anchors. “Don’t be a dummy and lose the dummy,” he quipped as he tethered one with the name tag Julio to a buoy near Robbers Passage.

The nine men searching for Julio, and his friends Amy and Carl, are in Bamfield for immersive training in marine search and rescue. They come from four First Nations along the BC coast, the farthest from the Nisga’a First Nation village of Gingolx where the Nass River empties into the Pacific, north of Prince Rupert. Most have taken a few days just to get here, tasked by their communities to take part.

The intensive course is part of the Canadian Coast Guard’s Coastal Nations Search and Rescue (CNSAR) program, which provides support and training, as well as equipment and infrastructure, to coastal First Nations. The program has been evolving since its inception in 2015, and today, about 27 participants a year take the training in Bamfield, just one of a suite of programs under the coast guard’s Indigenous Community Response Training umbrella. The instruction and formal support are recognition that, like the men who rescued the crew of the Puritan, some of the coast’s most capable search and rescue specialists have been quietly at work since 1854 and no doubt long before. On New Year’s Day of that year, British Columbia’s first recorded shipwreck happened on the west coast. The 14 surviving crewmen of the British brig William were taken ashore and sheltered and fed by Indigenous people living near Pachena Point, just up the coast from where the Puritan wrecked nearly 43 years later.

Getting to this point—where some coastal nations are more formally integrated into search and rescues and receive world-class support and training—required foresight by coast guard brass and a great deal of trust by First Nations. Recognition of their on-the-ground expertise within their territories and acknowledgment of their historical participation in rescues—saving survivors, recovering and sometimes burying bodies, getting word of the wreck to lighthouses or nearby settlements—has been long in coming. At best, rescuers in the past were acknowledged with a passing mention in the newspaper, or perhaps a medal or the award of cash. At worst, they were hanged.

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A few days before the mock search for Julio and his friends, the first 2024 cohort of CNSAR participants gathers at McKay Bay Lodge in Bamfield. They’ve settled into their rooms and are gathered in the main lodge for orientation. Over dinner, they dispatch stunning mounds of spaghetti and talk quietly among themselves. Every once in a while, murmurs crescendo into cheers—several are streaming the annual All Native Basketball Tournament on their phones and they all have community teams in the competition. The tourney is in its 64th year, and it’s a big deal for the nations who travel to Prince Rupert for the friendly, but also fiercely competitive, week-long event. The shared experience and good-natured goading provides a bit of levity.

Dinner is also punctuated a few times by Scooby-Doo’s ruh-roh. It’s participant Tim Davidson’s text alert from his wife back on Haida Gwaii who’s eight-weeks pregnant and checking in regularly. Within a few minutes of meeting Davidson on the dock earlier that day, he’d shared that it’s the first time he’s been away from his young son. He gripped the front of his PFD, revealing a tattoo of a small hand—the size of his boy’s at three weeks—on the back of his.

After dinner, the group crowds onto the couch and armchairs in the lodge’s small living room, the fire in the woodstove snaps, and the large picture window clouds with moisture. This cohort just happens to be all men—women also take part—and ranges in age from 24 to 58. As they pass around a hefty coil of cedar-bark rope, a gift from a past participant that is used as a talking stick of sorts, the men share where they’re from and why they’ve come. Almost all mention their families, either their immediate relations or the larger extended family—aunties, cousins, grandparents, and other elders—of their coastal homes. They’re excited to be here, perhaps nervous and unsure of what to expect, but ultimately they’re eager to gain skills that will serve their communities. They’re all watermen, have spent their lives on boats, and are often tasked with searches since there’s no one else to call—the coast guard can be several hours away. Often, that means searching for a friend or relative. “Picture a 16-year-old kid riding up the river in the dark going to look for your cousin,” says William Smythe of Gingolx, his voice hesitant. “That’s how it started [for me].”

Most have been tasked to come by their communities because they’re already serving in emergency capacities. Warren Aster, from the Gitxaała Nation on British Columbia’s central coast, is emblematic of this. He does community policing for his nation, serves in the fire department and as a first responder, and does environmental monitoring such as water quality testing and abalone surveys. Similarly, Fabian Stewart, from Gingolx, is fire chief and bylaw officer and is always called upon for rescues, whether they be on land or water. “If [there’s an emergency] and you have a running boat, you’d better go out and look,” echoes Smythe, Stewart’s lifelong friend.

In mariners’ parlance, these boats are “vessels of opportunity”—vessels in the vicinity of an incident that can respond. Because in British Columbia there are dozens of coastal First Nations communities—many of which are boat- or floatplane-access-only and where many residents will learn to drive a boat long before they can drive a car—it stands to reason that many of the first first responders on scene will be people from these communities. Such was the case on October 25, 2015, when two fishermen from Ahousaht, a First Nation village of about 1,100 people just up the coast from Tofino, a popular resort destination on Vancouver Island’s west coast, spotted a distress flare. It had been sent from the Leviathan II, a Tofino-based whale watching boat that had capsized. The fishermen tried to get through to the coast guard on channel 16, the emergency channel, but the reception was poor. They also roused their community of Ahousaht on marine VHF channel 68, the radio frequency used for everyday communication within the village. Within minutes, community members mobilized in their own boats. In the end, the Ahousahts helped rescue 21 people and retrieved the bodies of five. The coast guard also responded, as did other boats in the area, but the event brought into sharp relief the fact that First Nations people are often first on scene in marine emergencies and that the coordination of rescue efforts between First Nations and federal authorities was “lacking,” as Roger Girouard, then assistant commissioner for the Canadian Coast Guard said in the accident’s aftermath.

The Leviathan II, as well as the sinking of the BC ferry Queen of the North in 2006—in which the people from Hartley Bay, within Gitga’at First Nation territory, helped get 99 passengers and crew safely to shore—were two dramatic and catastrophic events that demonstrated First Nations people were the “absolute best asset in terms of a first-on-scene resource for marine search and rescue,” says Geoff Carrow, deputy superintendent of search and rescue programs at the Canadian Coast Guard.

When the Leviathan II sank in 2015, the coast guard was taking its first tentative steps to more formally work with First Nations and had started to reach out to communities, but the accident spurred the effort and the 2017 Oceans Protection Plan provided seed funding. The CAN $1.5-billion federal initiative to improve marine safety and protect and restore marine ecosystems included significant investment for coastal First Nations to provide training, equipment, and coordinated planning for integration of local teams into search and rescue operations. Carrow and two other staff were dedicated full-time to crafting the Indigenous Community Response Training program in British Columbia. From the beginning, Carrow knew that for the relationship to work, it had to be led by the communities and it had to be built on trust. First question: Were the communities interested in a more formalized relationship? If so, what did they need? The coast guard’s efforts needed to be tangible and dependable. First Nations were all too accustomed to people arriving on their shores unannounced or with grand pronouncements or ideas to impose.

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Since the first recorded contact was made on the BC coast in 1774, when Spanish explorer Juan Pérez on the ship Santiago traded briefly with Haida and Nuu-chah-nulth people, unknown ships have often proved problematic to Indigenous peoples. Explorers, traders, sealers, churches, Indian agents and other representatives of governments took many things: resources, cultural artifacts, fishing gear, children. They left other things behind: diseases, missionaries, burned villages, destroyed canoes, confusion, mistrust.

Worldviews and ideologies collided in February 1869 when the bark John Bright was wrecked on a boulder-studded stretch of shore near Estevan Point, Vancouver Island, losing all 22 on board, including the captain’s wife and children and their nanny. It’s unclear whether the disaster was witnessed by Hesquiaht people of the area, but sometime after it happened, a group came upon the wreck and the beach strewn with bodies, some without clothes, arms, heads. They carried the remains above the high-tide line; some they buried.

Weeks later, a passing trader, known for his less-than-scrupulous behavior, brought news of the wreck to Victoria, where the tragedy was twisted and sensationalized in the British Colonist, the newspaper of the day, fomenting outrage in the capital’s citizenry. The victims had been alive when they got to shore, the self-proclaimed witness insisted, only to be murdered, raped, and defiled on shore—heads cut off “to preclude the possibility of identification,” and the “bodies stripped of all clothing.”

When a body is tossed from a ship and onto a shoreline of boulders and reefs, it churns like a rag doll in a rock tumbler. The head, heavy as a bowling ball, is often the first to disarticulate. Feet also detach, and limbs; the clothing is peeled off by abrasion and the sea’s icy fingers. Coroners know this, and it’s likely that people living on the coast have long known this, too.

The surgeon aboard the gunboat HMS Sparrowhawk, the ship used by the colonial government to dispense law and order along the coast, said as much when he assumed the role of coroner and inspected exhumed bodies, noting that he could find no medical evidence to indicate that the bodies had been decapitated by human hands. He wrote in his notes that wild animals and pounding surf likely accounted for the injuries.

When the Sparrowhawk arrived on their shore, the Hesquiahts seemed unconcerned and willingly cooperated, including showing the items they’d salvaged from the wreck. Still, despite the coroner’s testimony, officials aboard the Sparrowhawk determined foul play and demanded the villagers turn over the perpetrators. When none were forthcoming, Royal Marines came ashore and burned houses and destroyed canoes. Finally, seven men—five witnesses and two accused—were seized and taken to Victoria for trial.

Against an all-male, all-white jury and unrelenting newspaper coverage, two Hesquiaht men—John Anayitzachist and Katkinna—were accused of murder and sentenced to be hanged. With the men in irons, the Sparrowhawk took them home to their village where they were executed on the beach in front of their community. David Higgins, publisher of the British Colonist, couldn’t resist a final smug volley when he reported that the gallows was left in place as a “lesson” to other “evil-disposed Indians.”

It’s no wonder that it can take time for coastal nations to trust the government when it comes calling, even a century and a half later.

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The best advice Carrow received when he first started with the Indigenous Community Response Training was from a supervisor who told him to visit coastal First Nations communities, spend time on the docks, and ask, “How can I help?”

“We didn’t show up with a plan,” Carrow says. “We didn’t show up saying, ‘This is how we’re going to do things.’” Instead, he introduced himself to locals and learned who was often called on for searches or to help tow boats or otherwise offer marine assistance. He found those people whose doors others banged on at 2:00 a.m. when there was an emergency. Then, he explains, he chatted with them about their search and rescue experience, toured their boats, and asked what equipment they might need, such as flares, PFDs, first aid kits, or radios. If they’re going out in their personal boats to help people, “we need to get them the equipment they need so that they’re safe on the water and that they can communicate with us,” says Carrow.

Over eight years, he’s been a consistent face of the program, with strong relationships in First Nations communities. Government officials are too often thought of as driftwood, he says; “We come and go with the tide.”

Today, the program is multifaceted. Carrow, Kerr, and their colleagues regularly visit about 20 coastal communities a year to deliver equipment and get updates on training needs, and they offer different options for skills training, from the thrice-yearly Bamfield intensive to a recently developed “soft landing” program that brings participants to Victoria to tour the coast guard station there, meet staff, and see how they, and their community, can fit within the program.

Carrow’s team supports a broad range of people to build the search and rescue capacity along the coast. Most comprehensive are the self-run and community-led Coastal Nations Coast Guard Auxiliary stations. Eight are currently operational, with two more in the works. They’re in places that have a demonstrated search and rescue need—where communities already do a significant number of searches, and which aren’t easily served by regular coast guard stations. These units have purpose-built rescue vessels with appropriate equipment, and they get the most intensive training. Carrow and his colleagues also support community members who are on the water for work, for instance: coastal guardians, teams trained to respond to environmental emergencies, and even water taxi drivers and fishermen. When Carrow does his introduction at the Bamfield CNSAR course, he sums up the program’s philosophy: “We’re trying to figure out how to best support you so you can continue doing what you’re doing out there, which is rocking it,” he says. “But we want you to come home safe.”

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Safety on the water includes excellent communication, and that’s a constant theme during the week at Bamfield. As the participants go through the mock rescue of the missing kayakers, Kerr constantly stresses clear communication, both on the boats and over the radio. “[We want to] get them in the habit of communicating with us,” says Kerr. “Us” means the coast guard and the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria. For teams used to getting the job done on their own, linking into the greater coast guard’s more rigid set of protocols can take some getting used to.

One of the boats calls in to Kerr, who is rescue lead: “Exercise radio, exercise radio. This is RHIOT 2. We have a possible person in the water at four eight, five three, decimal, zero five north; one two five, zero seven, decimal, five three west.”

Kerr asks their intentions—they’ll investigate, come alongside, and pull the person out of the water—and confirms he’ll pass on the details to the rescue coordination center.

About four minutes later, RHIOT 2 reports back that they’ve recovered Amy, that she is “cold but otherwise fine,” and that they are keeping her warm and will transport her to Bamfield for further care.

Faux kayakers safe and accounted for, the participants return to Bamfield at dusk. But the day’s exercises aren’t over yet. They have unceremoniously hauled the rescue manikins aboard during the scenario, and now it’s time to learn proper techniques. Illuminated by the spotlights on the Bamfield coast guard station dock, the men jump into the frigid Pacific and spend the next hour learning PIW—person in water—recovery techniques, taking turns being victim and rescuer.

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Alec Dick, from Ahousaht, was one of the first to take the plunge with the CNSAR program back in 2016. Dick carried out emergency services for his community, so when the Leviathan II sank in 2015, his house became a command center of sorts. His living room window looked out toward the scene of the disaster, and he monitored the community boats heading out to respond. “The coast guard wasn’t on site yet,” he explains. “I was telling these guys that if you have people on board, get going to Tofino.” After the initial disaster, the community continued to help in the search for one missing person. “We did locate [him] a few days later,” he says.

Dick motions to another location visible from the beach where a float plane with three Ahousaht people on board crashed in 2010, another accident that initiated a full-on community response. A water taxi driver from the village was first on site, and his ability to pinpoint the location where the plane sank was invaluable to coast guard divers when they arrived. On the off chance someone had made it out of the plane, community members walked and boated the beaches and rocky shorelines for days after. There were no survivors, and the incident was a sobering reminder that search and rescue response in these small communities often means looking for a loved one.

Dick’s years of emergency response experience made him an ideal contact when the coast guard was looking to have a more formal relationship with coastal nations. “After the [Leviathan II] happened, we had a big meeting with the Canadian Coast Guard and other government people, and I was asked if I was willing to become part of the auxiliary coast guard,” he says. It was a welcome change in attitude. “I think they finally realized they need to be working with First Nations. We knew it a long time ago, that we needed to be interconnected in some way to work together.”

Ahousaht’s chief and council agreed to the coast guard’s offer to craft a program together, and Dick became one of the first to go through the Bamfield course. He’s a leader in the CNSAR program, and his instrumental role in helping to develop the program earned him a BC lieutenant governor’s award for maritime achievement. Although he leaves a lot of the responses to younger members now, he’s still fully involved in the CNSAR program as the board chair of the Coastal Nations Coast Guard Auxiliary and is regularly asked to do presentations about the organization. Most recently, he spoke at a meeting of the International Maritime Rescue Federation in Victoria.

The rapport with the Canadian Coast Guard has come a long way in eight years from what “was a bare-minimum relationship, that was more or less ‘you go your way, I go my way,’ you know?” Dick says. Whether it was a change of the guard, or a change in attitude and understanding, he says that now they’re “putting trust in one another.” Adding, “it’s a working relationship … that is so rewarding for both sides.”

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That working relationship was put to practice in a dramatic rescue on January 25, 2022. A water taxi en route to Ahousaht slammed into a rock, thrusting its four passengers, who were sitting on bench seats, forward into the next row, and the driver into the windscreen. The driver managed to get a Mayday out and both the Ahousaht Coast Guard Auxiliary and the Tofino-based coast guard responded. Tom Stere, rescue specialist at the Tofino station, quickly dispatched with another crewman and headed to the scene. The seas were calm, but dense fog swathed the coast, cutting visibility to just 15 meters, if that. When they arrived, the Ahousaht coast guard crew was already on site, tied alongside the damaged boat, and assessing the scene. “Because of their training, the communication was seamless,” says Stere. As senior officer, he took charge of the response and tasked the Ahousaht members with various roles. By this time, other private vessels from Ahousaht had arrived, too, ready to offer assistance as needed.

It was a chaotic scene. There were multiple injuries in a very small space filled with gear and bent seats, so extraction was challenging. The passengers had numerous broken bones, including one woman with a severely traumatized face, and the captain had a head injury. To add to the challenge, a bottle of dish soap had exploded, and the interior was slick with detergent, blood, and broken glass.

Working together, the teams extracted the passengers, got them ready for transport, and sent them to Tofino on the boats standing by. All but one of the passengers were medevacked out of Tofino for treatment.

For Stere, it was a game changer having the Ahousaht team. “To be frank, it reduced my anxiety,” he says. He knew he had competent people on scene, with the appropriate gear—first aid, stretchers, pumps, for instance—with complementary training. “They’re a critical component of our [search and rescue] response, without question,” he says.

Stere has lived in Tofino for 37 years and has been with the coast guard for 33. He’s pleased to see the new, formalized relationship and the acknowledgment that these communities have always been there to rescue people in their territorial waters. “It’s a major shift in the culture and mindset of the coast guard,” he says, adding that it’s permeating throughout the organization.

Carrow agrees. Ever mindful that CNSAR funding could be cut with a change of government, he’s working to ensure that it’s not just Carrow and his team who have the relationships. “They need to be held throughout the coast guard, from the newest employee to the most senior executive,” he says. Exposure to the program will make its importance crystal clear, he contends. What we’re doing with CNSAR is not trivial, not lip service, he says. “[The program] is working and we’re saving lives.”

The successes of the CNSAR program spurred its expansion across Canada in 2022 with the second phase of the Oceans Protection Plan. Today, the Canadian Coast Guard has Indigenous search and rescue programs under development on the Atlantic coast and in the “central region,” which encompasses Ontario, Quebec, and the Arctic coast.

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For a government that has made many promises around reconciling past injustices with First Nations people, it would be convenient to point to the CNSAR program as proof of progress, a box checked. While the initiative has clearly shown success, Carrow is cautious about using the word reconciliation lightly. True reconciliation doesn’t come with a program, he says. “It’s got to be a personal relationship.” Building relationships and trust takes time, especially with government.

After almost a decade working closely with Carrow and the CNSAR program, Dick can feel the shift. He’s experienced new levels of openness and trust, and he sees an agency committed to more meaningful involvement with First Nations. “Not just to see them, but to hear them,” he says.

Acknowledging past harms and how they can reverberate for generations often takes time, too. In November 2012, after petitions by the Hesquiaht First Nation, the BC government “expressed regret” to the Hesquiaht people and the families of John Anayitzachist and Katkinna for their wrongful hangings 143 years before. The federal government also exonerated the men in 2018.

Before these apologies, in 2008, master carver Tim Paul erected a pole in honor of his relative Anayitzachist on the beach at Homais, the place where he was hanged. It depicts a shark, an octopus, and, on top, Anayitzachist. Though its vibrant blue-and-red paint has now mostly faded to silver, the pole still stands, its base carpeted by a lush growth of thimbleberry and salal. Anayitzachist looks out to sea, watching for those passing by and those who might land on this shore.

When I first see the canoe, in May, it takes a moment to distinguish the long, shapely slab of cedar from the patch of earth that has spent more than a century trying to reclaim it. Covered in moss and ravaged by decades of slow rot, the narrow boat lay in the same spot where Indigenous Alaskans had carved it from the trunk of a western red cedar. They did this in the place where the tree fell—first by cutting it into two pieces, then by fashioning the canoe from the lower portion of the tree so that it sits between the stump and the abandoned upper part of the trunk like a philosophical question made real: excised and reshaped but never moved from where it fell, is it not still part of the tree? Seaworthy but destined never to touch the sea, is it not still a boat?

I’d traveled halfway around the world for a glimpse of this forest-floor tableau: a long flight from my home in Tokyo, Japan, to Seattle, Washington, followed by a shorter trip to Ketchikan, a small town in southeast Alaska where I spent much of my childhood. From there, a very small plane took me to Prince of Wales Island to meet my guide, Stormy Hamar, who shepherded me to the canoe site by car, then on a small skiff powered by a 60-horsepower outboard engine, and eventually on foot. With no clear path to follow, we made our own way from the shoreline to the island’s lush, hilly interior, climbing over trees felled by wind, crawling beneath spiky tendrils of devil’s club, passing through shallow streams and around walls of dense brush. The canoe’s location, deep in the wild, is a closely guarded secret meant to protect the unique archaeological site from adventure-seeking tourists. Hamar—also known by his Haida name, Gitáang—agreed to take me in part because of my Tlingit heritage, which makes my history entwined with that of his own Haida ancestors, who are thought to have carved the canoe roughly 140 years ago before abandoning it for reasons we will never know.

A grim weather forecast made it necessary to rush from the airstrip to the canoe site, still dressed in the slacks and shirt I put on for my flight out of Tokyo. Hamar, who is 57, wears black Carhartt pants, a patterned knit sweater, and a pair of round-framed eyeglasses beneath a broad-brimmed hat made from woven red cedar bark. A thick handlebar mustache and large pistol and holster strapped to his side reinforce his outdoorsman bona fides.

He first heard about this place over a decade earlier, he tells me, from a local man who stumbled upon it while scouting the island for a prospective helicopter logging operation. This man was employed by one of 13 Alaska Native regional corporations tasked with managing tribal assets and investments for enrolled Indigenous beneficiaries throughout the state: in this case, the Sealaska Corporation, which represents the interests of Tlingit and Haida shareholders like Hamar and me. For decades, much of Sealaska’s revenue has been tied to the extraction of resources from its significant landholdings, including the patch of old-growth forest where the canoe was found. The scout who discovered the site was far from the waterline, high up in the kind of steep terrain considered ideal for helicopter logging, when he noticed an unusual number of stumps for a site where cutting had not yet begun. Then he noticed that many of the fallen logs next to those stumps were missing sections of their trunks up to 10 meters long. Only after finding a single canoe that had been carved but not hauled away did he realize where the missing sections had gone.

Sealaska abandoned its plans to log the site and brought in a handful of people by helicopter to help decide what to do with the canoe. Hamar, who lives in the nearby village of Kasaan and is active in tribal and community affairs, was among them. By the time he got his first glimpse of the canoe, Hamar had already studied traditional Haida boatmaking techniques long enough to know he was looking at something special.

One thing in particular caught his attention. Traditionally, once dugout canoes have been carved from a single cedar or spruce log, they are filled with seawater and heated rocks to produce a water vapor that is then trapped beneath a heavy tarp made from woven cedar, causing the wood to expand and the boat to become much broader and stronger. This canoe’s narrow hull and shallow interior told Hamar that its creators had finished the carving work but abandoned the boat before carrying out the steaming process. Because wooden boats don’t typically last long in wet environments—and because Alaska’s southeastern archipelago is largely temperate rainforest—unfinished canoes are rare in the archaeological record. This and others found in coastal British Columbia and Alaska stand apart from canoes preserved in museums or built by modern craftspeople for the clues they may offer about boatmaking traditions lost during the period after colonization and before post-assimilation initiatives aimed at preserving Alaska Native culture. In particular, this canoe offers insight into the vital step before steaming, a process that changes a boat’s shape considerably.

“When we look at the old canoe in the woods, even though it’s falling apart and there’s not too much left of it, there may be things we can learn from it, especially relating to the shape,” Hamar says. “It may have hidden secrets.”

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Hamar has not been to the canoe site in well over a year, so one of the obstacles we must overcome to get there is his imperfect memory. There is no path, after all, and whatever brush he cleared the last time is by now overgrown. False landmarks lead us astray, and areas that have become impassable since his last visit force us to turn back more than once. As he leads the way, I think about our pairing through the lens of history. For thousands of years, our Tlingit and Haida ancestors fought bitterly over resources and power, resulting in two quasi-nomadic societies that had lived so close to one another, for so long, that our cultures became nearly indistinguishable. Identifying a totem pole as Tlingit rather than Haida, or a canoe as Haida rather than Tlingit, requires real expertise, and sometimes hinges on knowing which tribe controlled the area at the time it was made.

Canoes were among the most important objects made by Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people, whose way of life depended on navigating the inhospitable geography of what is now southeast Alaska and coastal British Columbia. The region’s dense temperate rainforest and snowy peaks are spread out across more than 1,100 islands, separated by broad ocean channels, winding rivers, and narrow streams. Moving through this network of sinuous waterways was so important that each tribe developed a range of sophisticated canoes: some meant for trade or warfare; some for hunting, fishing, and foraging; others for moving large numbers of people from the clan’s winter village to its summer one. Some were suitable for traveling long distances on the open ocean; others engineered for speed, stealth, or stability in rough waters. The largest war canoes held 60 or more people, while the smallest vessels carried only a lone pilot. Large or small, all were dugout-style canoes.

The Tlingit and Haida were especially renowned canoe carvers, in part because they so relied on them, and in part because they had access to arguably the best trees of all the coastal tribes of the Pacific Northwest. One Spaniard sailing through the region in the late 1700s wrote that the canoes were “exactly proportioned” and “extremely light and strong and very well shaped.” Initially, the arrival of Europeans meant that more canoes were needed to satisfy the demand for fur from otters and seals, which could be most effectively hunted from this sort of vessel. Later, as trade with Europeans led to the spread of diseases such as smallpox, and as white missionaries sought to replace Indigenous culture with Christianity and commerce, traditions like the carving of canoes and totem poles suffered. In 1884, Canada’s government outlawed the Indigenous funerary and gift-giving celebration known as the potlatch, for which new canoes and totem poles were often made. Demand for both subsided.

Still, the traditions never fully disappeared. When Hamar was a kid in the 1970s and early ’80s, living in a float house anchored off the coast of Prince of Wales Island, he and his brother mounted an outboard motor on a crude dugout canoe they found washed up on the beach and piloted it to and from school. Then, around 2008, he apprenticed under the late Tsimshian master carver Stan Marsden. Marsden was part of a generation of carvers who carried on the renaissance that emerged from a New Deal program, which funded training for Alaska Natives to craft totem poles for parks. His last totem pole still stands in front of the school in Kasaan, reminding Hamar of how Marsden’s mentorship helped him navigate a difficult time in his life.

“It was essentially a time of healing for me,” Hamar says. “He put me to work as a volunteer, and I just spent my days there for over a year helping him on that totem pole. I learned a lot from him, and not just about carving.”

Hamar and his family had recently moved to Kasaan from a nearby village, and he had quit logging, a trade he learned from his father before the clearcutting years of Alaska’s timber boom. “Somewhere in that time period, I really just made a shift in my life and committed myself to carving canoes and totem poles and basically doing as many cultural activities as I could think of,” Hamar says. Today, he crafts canoes in a covered tent behind his home, and compiles scrapbooks filled with archival photographs, articles, and other research materials on canoe building. Through his research, he tells me, he became increasingly fascinated by the gaps in passed-down knowledge that resulted from efforts to erase and outlaw Tlingit and Haida culture.

Hamar’s quest to fill in these gaps has drawn us deep into the forest in old Haida territory, where we suddenly come across the abandoned canoe. At first, my eyes struggle to discern its shape, in the same way they seek out the familiar contours of my bedside lamp when I wake in pitch blackness. Once revealed to me, though, the outline of the vessel is so obvious that it could almost serve as the model for an emoji of a canoe. The effect of seeing it in the wild is jarring in a way I had not expected. Instead of resting behind glass in a sterile museum, where its context would depend on educational placards and set decoration to make it appear as a kind of enormous diorama, the object stands before me in the only place it has ever existed. The craftspeople who shaped it, now long dead, had done the work here, in this very forest.

“They very well may have been sleeping around here somewhere,” Hamar says. “It seems like it would be most efficient to live here, you know, given the amount of time it would take to create the canoe.”

Long after its builders departed, the canoe remains more or less as they left it—raised off the ground by two logs that sit beneath it at either end like two massive sawhorses. Undisturbed, unstudied, and exposed to the elements, the canoe lay beneath a coat of moss and rot that, when Hamar first encountered it, made the matter of deciding its fate especially urgent. If the canoe was to be moved to a museum, it would need to be done before it rotted further, and with the understanding that the process itself could end up destroying the delicate vessel. Leaving it to the elements, on the other hand, would preserve the object in its natural surroundings but make its long-term preservation impossible and its study difficult.

“There’s one thought process, for example, that when a totem pole gets old and starts deteriorating, you kind of let it go back to the earth without interference,” Hamar says. “And then there’s another mindset that you would maintain it just like you might maintain your boat or your car. These are just opinions, of course, and I go back and forth, but essentially, I think it would be a shame if any information is lost, because we really don’t know the significance of what we might be losing.”

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In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, months after the last tourists had departed Kasaan, a solution to Hamar’s dilemma presented itself in the form of an unfamiliar vehicle that pulled up in front of his property. It was driven by a man named Jason Rucker, who was sailing through southeast Alaska with his wife. The pair stopped after noticing a huge cedar log near the tent where Hamar spends his days carving, and soon they found themselves in the middle of an impromptu tour. “It was really inspiring and moving,” Rucker says, “hearing him talk about his work on these canoes.”

Before they left, Hamar mentioned the decaying Haida canoe and his hope to document it for posterity. It was at this point that Rucker’s wife turned to him and said, you have to tell this guy what you do. “I have been into wooden boats, and worked on wooden boats, for my entire adult life,” Rucker tells me. For years, he had done repair and restoration work for the San Francisco Maritime Museum, where he also made specialized drawings of significant boats for the historical record. Called “lines drawings,” they resemble architectural renderings, but for maritime vessels.

“Not to get too poetic about it, but the way I think of it is that all those boats are telling part of the story of the evolution of [that type of] boat, and the variations of the boat,” Rucker says. “And the whole history of the boat.”

Rucker and Hamar stayed in touch. Before long, they’d secured a Maritime Heritage Grant, made available through Alaska’s Office of History and Archaeology, to document the canoe, and formalized the project under the umbrella of Hamar’s nonprofit, the Haida Canoe Revitalization Group. Then Rucker roped in Cultural Heritage Imaging, a San Francisco–based nonprofit that uses technology to create sophisticated digital images and 3D renderings of cultural artifacts, with an emphasis on helping Indigenous groups “take control of their own cultural narratives.”

When I speak with Mark Mudge, cofounder of Cultural Heritage Imaging, he underscores the significance of such efforts by recalling a trip to Nigeria to teach locals basic imaging skills for digitally preserving heritage artifacts. “We were at this beautiful Nigerian state museum,” he says. “I was given a tour and I thought, as we went along, That would be a nice thing to image, and that would be a nice thing to image.” But when Mudge asked the students themselves to choose something, they “brought back an object that I would never have selected in a million years.” Similarly, he tells me, the Haida canoe represents “a superb example of … enabling Indigenous communities to document what’s important to them,” as opposed to what’s of interest to anthropologists.

Creating high-resolution 3D images of cultural items is especially important in Alaska, where many people live in places with no road access, making it difficult to travel to museums to see artifacts taken from their communities. Cultural Heritage Imaging had already worked with the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage to write a grant and train staff as part of a broader effort to “digitally repatriate” hundreds of cultural materials before those objects are later physically repatriated to communities. If all goes according to plan, the digital reproductions will one day be freely available to anyone with an internet connection.

To create a similar digital rendering of the Haida canoe was a daunting proposition, given the remoteness of the site. It took years for the Haida Canoe Revitalization team to prepare. Finally, just a few days after my own visit, Rucker, Hamar, Hamar’s daughter Stephanie, and Stephanie’s four-year-old daughter are ready to make the journey, along with a pair of archaeologists and a graduate student from the University of Alaska Southeast, in Juneau. The weather, which had limited travel to and from Prince of Wales for days, suddenly clears.

At the canoe site, the team spreads out and gets to work. Rucker and Stephanie Hamar use a digital camera to photograph the boat, capturing tens of millions of measurements of spatial positions that will ultimately fit together like jigsaw pieces to produce a hyper-accurate 3D model. One of the archaeologists maps the area with a large drone equipped with lidar, a mapping technology that uses a laser capable of penetrating vegetation, while the other archaeologist and Stormy Hamar survey the site by foot. The pair confirms what the logger who found the site had suspected: not just one canoe but a whole fleet had been carved here, making it a kind of Haida boatyard.

Later that night, back at Hamar’s house, the team transmits hundreds of photographs to Mudge’s server in San Francisco, using the painfully slow internet available in Kasaan. As Mudge stitches the photos together, he identifies missing angles, and Rucker and Stephanie trudge back to the canoe site several times over the next few days to get the missing shots. Piece by piece, the secrets of the canoe hidden beneath decades of moss and decay begin to reveal themselves.

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On the last day of my visit, as Hamar had driven me from Kasaan to the small airstrip in Klawock, we’d stopped at another woodshop. The building wasn’t unlike a small airplane hangar, with a simple, sturdy construction and high ceilings, but instead of for an aircraft, it was made to accommodate a new totem pole that two men were carving. Inside, the men talked about local politics while shaping the massive log using adzes and other specialized tools. The overpowering scent of cedar shavings brought back childhood memories—of Tlingit halibut hooks and canoe paddles carved by my uncle, and countless totem poles and canoes I’d seen take shape in the southeast Alaska communities where I grew up.

A few weeks later, I send Hamar a text message from Tokyo, and get a swift reply saying he’s about to embark on a long canoe trip from Kasaan to Juneau to take part in Celebration 2024, a four-day Alaska Native festival. Since 2008, this decades-old biennial celebration of dancing, art, food, and fellowship has commenced with a “coming ashore ceremony” on a beach near Juneau. Paddlers from Kake, Ketchikan, Angoon, and elsewhere leave their homes days before, sometimes paddling hundreds of kilometers in hand-carved canoes to reach the beach. Many of the vessels were carved by what might be called ambitious novices, who have honed their craft through years of study and apprenticeship, trial and error.

These artisans and others like them are among those who might benefit from the work documenting and digitally preserving the canoe in the forest. Once the digital rendering is complete, carvers throughout the region will be able to access it from their own homes and communities, peering at the canoe’s precise measurements, or at cross-sections that show, for instance, how the bottom curve of the canoe corresponds perfectly with a growth ring deep in the heartwood of the cedar it came from. They’ll be able to see exactly how much girth was removed from the exterior of the tree before the carving began, or examine the nuances of how the hull was shaped before it was altered by steaming.

The canoe itself will stay in the forest where it was carved, rotting into soil, preserved only as drawings in a book or images on a computer screen. The team hopes to eventually take measurements and make similar digital models of other canoes—including up to 20 more found abandoned in forests in British Columbia and Alaska—creating an archive of boats from around the region.

Back in Tokyo, the first entry in this prospective digital archive reaches me via email. I open it and see the 3D rendering of the canoe, displayed in sharp yellow, green, and brown pixels. On my computer screen, the ghostly canoe rotates on command, over and over again. If I stare intently enough, I can conjure the familiar smell of a tree becoming timber and timber becoming totem.

A 3D digital rendering of the canoe in the forest. Video courtesy of the Haida Canoe Revitalization Group.

August 29, 2020, dawned clear over southwest Nova Scotia. In the cabin of his lobster boat, the Mystique Lady, Matthew Cope was chatting with the other members of his crew as they chugged out from shore. The vessel was bound for the area where Cope, a member of Millbrook First Nation, had set his 150 lobster traps the day before. Cope had prepared those traps with plastic-encased copies of his status card, bearing his name, photo, and registry number. On the back of each of card, Cope included the statement “These traps are being fished under section 4 of the 1752 peace and friendship treaty.” He was prepared for some trouble.

For years, Indigenous fishermen had been operating in the area, asserting their constitutional right to fish and sell lobster for a moderate livelihood—efforts that had received pushback from non-Indigenous fishermen and the Canadian government.

In the waning days of summer 2020, the situation had grown even more strained, and on the Mystique Lady, the atmosphere was tense. On the radar screen, Cope could see a Canadian Coast Guard vessel in the same area as his traps. Drawing closer, he found Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) officers hauling the traps onto their boat. Cope tried the coast guard channel on CB radio, then hollered at the officers to call him (he’d put his phone number on the buoys). Finally, Cope pulled close enough to the boat to talk, and gave the officer what he calls “the whole spiel”—he said DFO must be aware that they were violating his constitutional rights, that there was a duty to uphold the promises of the treaties, that what they were doing was wrong.

“[The officer] said ‘Yeah well, we’re still going to take them.’”

Altogether, officers took 90 of Cope’s traps; back on land, Cope called the DFO office, demanding that the traps be returned. A week later, DFO invited him for an interview. In a cramped room, bare except for a container of cleaning wipes on the table, Cope sat down for an intermittently tense and congenial conversation, during which Cope told two officers he wasn’t hiding anything. “I don’t even know why my traps are still being held under investigation when I told you guys clearly up front exactly what I’m doing,” he said, according to a video of the interview.

One officer told Cope the court would have to decide whether what Cope had been doing was legally protected.

For decades, Canada’s most lucrative fisheries—including lobster and baby eel, or elver—have been the subject of a fraught national conversation over Indigenous rights recognition. In 1999, Canada’s Supreme Court confirmed that the Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqiyik, and Peskotomuhkati Nations of what is now the Gaspé and Maritime regions had the right to fish for a “moderate livelihood,” based on 18th-century treaties, vindicating communities who’d been fighting for fishing rights for decades.

But the court didn’t define a “moderate livelihood”—and the government has not implemented fisheries based on Indigenous rights since then. In that void, uncertainty has proliferated on the water, in the courts, and among fishermen who thought they were protected by treaties settled centuries ago.

In a statement, a DFO spokesperson said that the Supreme Court did not clearly define moderate livelihood, stating only that the right did not extend to the open-ended accumulation of wealth. “Each Treaty Nation has a unique vision for the implementation of their right to fish in pursuit of a moderate livelihood, and many Treaty Nations assert that defining this concept is the responsibility of each community. DFO works to further implement the Treaty right through the negotiation of agreements, programmatic initiatives, or other arrangements using tools that reflect Treaty Nations’ interests and visions.”

The statement also noted that in the last 21 years, DFO has provided $630 million to participating Indigenous communities to help develop fishing enterprises for multiple species, and that the Indigenous share of the $4.2 billion Atlantic fishery was 6.4 per cent as of 2021, up from 0.2 percent in 1999.

Cope, 38, grew up in the wake of the 1999 Marshall decision, as it is known, and as an adult has grown impatient waiting for the government to enact meaningful change in Indigenous fisheries.

In his interview with DFO in September 2020, Cope levied a challenge to the agency: either return his traps or charge him so that he could properly fight his case in court. The following winter, he received an answer: DFO charged Cope with fishing for lobster in a closed season, having lobster traps aboard his vessel during a closed commercial season, fishing for lobster without authorization, and not having the proper lobster tags. “I thought for sure that was going to make the courts answer some questions [about the right to a moderate livelihood],” Cope says.

Cope is one of a handful of Mi’kmaw fishermen challenging the constitutionality of Canada’s restrictions on Indigenous fishing. Dozens of Indigenous fishermen face charges in Canada’s Atlantic provinces—more than 50 in Nova Scotia alone—because they sought to exercise a right that the Marshall decision was supposed to have secured 25 years ago.

For some of these fishermen, the legal system is a last resort for resolving the questions that have plagued implementation of moderate-livelihood fisheries for decades. But the pursuit of these cases is stymied by costs and delays, leaving people like Cope torn between wanting to fight for their rights and feeling frustrated and fatigued by having to go through the process.

There’s a deeper tension at play too; some experts question whether funneling cases into the inherently adversarial—and colonial—legal system is even wise, or if it undermines the opportunity to achieve more peaceful coexistence.

Unquestionably, in the vacuum left by the lack of a political answer to the question of Indigenous fishing rights—which, for many nations, means the authority to manage their own fisheries—the issue will be sucked into the courts time and again. “It’s not a case where the courts are eagerly wanting to [get involved],” says Wayne MacKay, professor emeritus at Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law in Halifax. “They’re doing it as part of their duty, because the political levels of government have not solved it.”

These cases are fundamentally about promises made in treaties that were signed when Canada was not a nation but a British colony.

“[Canada] inherited these promises,” says Naiomi Metallic, professor at Dalhousie’s Schulich School of Law and member of Listuguj Mi’gmaq First Nation. “But you also had those promises reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in 1999. [The government has] an obligation to make good on their treaty obligations; they’re not doing that, and it’s forcing people into the criminal justice system.”

Cope and others didn’t go looking for a legal fight—they just wanted to fish. But in the troubled waters of fishing rights, they’re pushing back and asking, How will Canada honor those promises now?

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At Cope’s Millbrook First Nation home, about an hour from Halifax, his dog, a gentle cane corso named Cash, keeps watch. Cope disappears into the home office that abuts his kitchen and comes back with a document—a 50-page outline of his family tree, going back hundreds of years.

The tree’s most important detail is not its age but the name typed near the beginning: Jean Baptiste Cope, Chief of Shubenacadie, who on November 22, 1752, signed a treaty with the British.

Jean Baptiste Cope was born in 1698 to Paul and Cecile Kopit, and grew up speaking Mi’kmaw and French (Cope is an anglicized version of kopit, meaning beaver in Mi’kmaw). By his late 20s, he was Chief of the Shubenacadie District—an area covering roughly the middle third of the province—and soon became an influential figure in the wars fought between the British, the French, and the sovereign Indigenous nations who’d lived for millennia in what are now Canada’s Maritime provinces. (The French ultimately lost these wars, leading to the British domination of Atlantic Canada.)

The conflicts with Indigenous nations were brought to an end by a series of military alliance treaties with the British, called the Peace and Friendship Treaties, in the period from 1726 to 1779. One of these is the 1752 treaty signed in Halifax by Jean Baptiste Cope and Nova Scotia Governor Peregrine Hopson.

“He was smart enough and strategic enough to understand what the future was going to bring,” says Cope of his relative. “He knew that fishing trade was going to be a big part of the future, so he put it in the treaty.”

Those documents (and other treaties signed both before this and in later years with Indigenous nations across the country) underpin Canada as it exists today. “The constitution of Canada is built on the treaties themselves,” says Liam Smith, a lawyer in Nova Scotia who works primarily with Indigenous clients, including on constitutional challenges. But unlike treaties signed elsewhere in Canada, the Peace and Friendship Treaties did not involve any surrender of land or resources. Instead, they forged military and trade alliances, and guaranteed the right of Mi’kmaw, Wolastoqiyik, and Peskotomuhkati people to hunt, fish, farm, and earn a reasonable living without British interference. In the language of the 1752 treaty, it was a guarantee of “free liberty” of hunting and fishing, and of sale.

Two hundred years later, the 1999 Marshall decision cited these treaty rights. Donald Marshall Jr., a Mi’kmaw man from Membertou First Nation in Nova Scotia, was acquitted of catching and selling CAN $787 worth of adult eels without a license; his defense hinged on one of the Peace and Friendship treaties. In its decision, the court concluded that Marshall had a treaty right to a “moderate livelihood.” Not long after the decision, a commercial fishermen’s group applied for a rehearing of the case, and in November 1999, the court issued an unusual clarification called Marshall II. The clarification stated that the right to a moderate livelihood was not absolute and could be limited for conservation purposes or other “substantial public objectives.”

Cope’s appreciation of the treaties was kindled in the aftermath of Marshall. He’d always heard about treaty rights from his family but didn’t take them seriously until he started seeing, in Marshall and other court cases, that the treaties weren’t just pieces of paper, or fables from his father and grandfather, but living, mutually binding agreements.

Cope took particular pride in what he learned about how the Mi’kmaq hadn’t surrendered anything in the Peace and Friendship Treaties. Buoyed by that realization, Cope started amassing his own fishing gear, and secured his captain’s license. Three years later came the lobster trap incident and the DFO charges. Cope was ready to defend his treaty rights.

In Canada, section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes and affirms the Aboriginal and treaty rights of Indigenous peoples. To mount a constitutional challenge, Cope is arguing that the part of the Fisheries Act under which he’s been charged is unconstitutional. “I’m not going to let this go,” he says. “They haven’t heard the last from me yet.”

In doing so, he represents a younger generation of Mi’kmaw fishermen who are standing on the shoulders of Marshall—and who are not backing down from their rights.

But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

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In May 2020, just a few months before Cope’s run-in with DFO on the water, Cregg Battiste and Kevin Bernard from the Eskasoni First Nation were fishing for elvers on Nova Scotia’s eastern shore. Fishery officers arrested them and seized their gear. Over a year later, DFO charged the pair with violating a federal fisheries order prohibiting the fishing of eels under 10 centimeters. The government had created the order just a couple of weeks before Battiste and Bernard went fishing, to halt what DFO said was “a threat to the conservation and protection of the species,” a stipulation introduced in Marshall II through which treaty rights could be limited.

So in May 2023, a familiar scene played out in a Nova Scotia courtroom. The pair sat with their lawyer, Jeremiah Raining Bird, at the front of a sparsely decorated room, responding to fisheries charges. Battiste and Bernard were there, in provincial court, to give notice that they would be arguing that the fisheries management order violated their constitutionally protected treaty right to catch and sell fish to earn a moderate livelihood, as per the 1999 Marshall decision. The trial is set for October 2025, though in November 2024 Raining Bird asked the court to be removed as counsel, saying he hadn’t been able reach his clients.

Either way, the fishermen will have the opportunity to make their case after waiting five years and four months, a reminder that constitutional challenges are far from straightforward. Mounting a challenge also takes more than time; it can cost a million dollars in lawyers’ fees and the cost of bringing in expert witnesses to go up against an opponent—the federal government, called the Crown, since Canada is a constitutional monarchy—with much deeper pockets.

Lawyer Liam Smith says these charges impose a significant burden on Indigenous fishermen, who are often individuals with limited means. “The Crown just burns them out, financially,” he says. “It has unlimited resources to defend itself.”

In the fall of 2019, William Nicholas, 62, and his son, Zachery, 38, were fishing for lobster in waters near their home in the Mi’kmaw community of Pictou Landing First Nation, in Nova Scotia, when DFO fishery officers arrested them for fishing during a closed commercial season.

Father and son had initially planned to challenge the charges on constitutional grounds. But as the 2024 trial approached, the Mi’kmaw fishermen notified the court that they were withdrawing their constitutional challenge and asked to be sentenced instead. Their reason was purely financial; they couldn’t afford to bring in legal experts to testify.

“We didn’t have enough money to take it to a higher court,” William Nicholas says. “We had no choice.”

Yet the decision to end their constitutional challenge still cost them.

For sentencing, the judge for the case had ordered a pre-sentence report, called a Gladue report, outlining the defendants’ Indigenous background and circumstances. The report found that William and Zachery had experienced the kind of adverse circumstances that have impacted Indigenous communities since colonization—including racism, denial of treaty rights, and historical trauma—which the Nicholases hoped would lead to a reduced fine. Nonetheless, Judge Alain Bégin sided with the federal prosecutor’s recommendation and fined them a total of $4,000. The process left the father and son disillusioned.

At its core, litigation sets up adversarial, zero-sum arguments, says Nicole O’Byrne, constitutional historian and law professor at the University of New Brunswick. “It’s the opposite of what the treaty relationship is supposed to be about,” O’Byrne says. Treaties were meant to establish a framework for a relationship between self-governing parties. But courts are a blunt instrument imposed from outside that leaves no room for discussion.

One fundamental disadvantage of the legal system is that it heightens distrust and damages relationships, says Western University legal scholar Michael Coyle. And while courts play an important role in parsing constitutional boundaries, they weren’t created to deal with multifaceted disputes that require continued coexistence (think of what happens to a separating couple who ratchet up the rhetoric in a divorce trial). “That is antithetical to reconciliation between peoples who are going to be living together for a long time,” Coyle says.

Another case shows the limits of the courts in reaching a resolution.

In July 2020, Jason Lamrock, a member of the Wasoqopa’q (Acadia) First Nation, was heading back to shore on Nova Scotia’s southwestern coast with a load of lobster when DFO fishery officers arrested him and seized his boat, gear, and catch.

According to court documents (Lamrock declined an interview), he informed the fishery officers that as a Mi’kmaw, he was practicing his treaty right to catch and sell lobster to earn a moderate livelihood. Yet he was charged nonetheless for illegally fishing for lobster during a closed commercial season.

Lamrock pleaded guilty to the fishery offenses and was referred to a sentencing circle (an alternative to the formal court process, which offers non-binding recommendations to the judge), organized by the Mi’kmaw Legal Support Network.

In June 2023, a circle composed of Lamrock, Mi’kmaw community members, and members of the justice system gathered and—according to the sentencing circle report—Lamrock told those assembled that “his intention was to go fish lobster in support of fellow Indigenous fishermen and (their) inherent right to fish.”

After hearing from Lamrock, the sentencing circle participants recommended that DFO write a letter of apology to him, return his boat and gear, and pay him the full year of wages he would have earned if his boat and gear hadn’t been seized. But a month later, when the sentencing itself took place in provincial court, the judge said that he was vacating Lamrock’s guilty plea because, in Lamrock’s statement to the circle about his intention to assert fishing rights, the judge saw no admission of guilt.

That sent Lamrock back to square one. He’s now fighting the charge on constitutional grounds; a trial date has not yet been set.

Lamrock’s case reflects a process that—by playing out in the criminal justice system—makes criminals out of people attempting to resolve a political dispute. And even in the best-case scenario for Lamrock, Cope, and the other fishermen pursuing constitutional challenges, the impact of a victory would be limited. If the court finds a regulation unconstitutional—meaning DFO officers enforced a regulation that infringed someone’s treaty rights—the charge is simply dropped. That could be a good outcome for someone like Cope, whose constitutional challenge is set to have its dates pinned down at a court appearance in 2025, but it doesn’t pave the way to a precedent that would finally define Indigenous fishing rights.

Another option with the potential for broader impact is to launch a civil case—specifically, a class action lawsuit (a civil suit on behalf of a group of people).

Class action lawsuits are an avenue fishermen have attempted to use before; in 2015, DFO charged a Mi’kmaw man named Hubert Francis, from Elsipogtog First Nation in New Brunswick, with fishing shrimp without a license. In court, Francis quoted from the Marshall decision—his only defense as he couldn’t afford a lawyer—but was convicted of fishing without a license regardless.

In response, Francis attempted to mount a civil case—a class action on behalf of all Mi’kmaq—to clarify fishing rights and require justification of infringement of those rights. But lacking funds (despite an unsuccessful bid for the government to cover costs, as it sometimes does on issues of exceptional public interest), the class action petered out.

Nonetheless, Cope sees Francis’s case as a source of inspiration: if he’s successful with his constitutional challenge—and can therefore make the case that the government knowingly hindered the exercise of his rights—he hopes to then launch a class action to set a broader precedent. Although, by his estimate, doing so could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. “We’re going to go the whole nine yards,” he says. “I don’t care how much it costs.”

For some groups, the more promising route has involved stepping outside the legal system.

In June 2024, Sipekne’katik First Nation, in Nova Scotia, was three years into a lawsuit claiming that the Fisheries Act infringed on its community’s rights to fish, when the band and the Attorney General of Canada decided to change tack and focus on mediation instead.

In their request for an adjournment, Canada and Sipekne’katik said the pause was necessary to engender trust. The judge, Chief Justice John Keith, agreed that reconciliation is better achieved through negotiation and gave the parties until December 2024 to put together a mediated solution. A commercial fishermen’s association, the Unified Fisheries Conservation Alliance, opposed the application, saying the court was the only body that would deliver an unbiased decision and direction to follow; that group has since filed a lawsuit against Sipekne’katik’s chief and the Attorney General of Canada, citing a need for legal clarity.

Either way, as Marshall remains—from the Mi’kmaw perspective—unimplemented, tensions have simmered and occasionally erupted. Mi’kmaw fishermen have reported feeling profiled and harassed by fisheries officers, including in March 2024 when two Mi’kmaw harvesters fishing for eels were arrested and then left at a gas station—hours from home, without their phones or shoes—a situation the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs has said reflected systemic racism that went beyond a few officers. (In July 2024, the federal fisheries minister announced there would be a comprehensive external review of the incident.) After that, some fisheries officers refused to report for duty, citing unsafe working conditions—compounded, they said, by the fisheries minister’s statements—and a rise in violence and threats from unlicensed fishermen. (Some Indigenous fishermen are among those whom DFO considers unauthorized.) Meanwhile, commercial fishermen have complained of increased poaching, with some reporting they’ve abandoned fishing grounds as a result.

For some scholars, these situations speak to a need for greater treaty education in the legal system, the federal government, and the general public. “When you get non-Indigenous people starting to understand that [there are] problems with the system, and that these problems go back hundreds of years … then we’re going to start getting some movement forward,” says University of New Brunswick professor Nicole O’Bryne.

That societal shift is happening in other contexts. Recently, negotiations culminated in British Columbia’s recognition of the Haida Nation’s title to the lands of Haida Gwaii, giving the Nation control over what was formerly considered provincially owned land; negotiations with Canada over Haida rights to control the waters around Haida Gwaii are ongoing. Provincial government officials said pursuing a negotiated agreement produced a clearer (and less expensive) outcome than a court decision would have.

Negotiation through mediation has an additional benefit; in a potentially adversarial situation, people are more likely to abide by an arrangement they’ve contributed to than one imposed by a third party, says Western University’s Michael Coyle.

But to even begin negotiating, there has to be trust. And for some fishermen, trust is a long way off.

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In July 2024, Cope was once again in court—not for the constitutional challenge but for charges laid while he was lobster fishing on Nova Scotia’s North Shore in September 2023.

In the years since Cope’s first charges, in 2021, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples had become law in Canada, and Canada’s Senate had released Peace on the Water, a report urging a new approach to Indigenous fisheries.

Yet in court it seemed that little had changed, and Cope was flabbergasted to be facing new charges—even more so when he learned, through the disclosure of the prosecution’s evidence, the extent of Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s surveillance for the month he was fishing: drones, aerial surveillance, trackers on the boats, officers taking photographs from the woods.

“The honor of the Crown is at stake,” says Cope. “That’s all I keep thinking when I look at [this disclosure].”

In a statement, a spokesperson for DFO said that “fishery officers use a progressive approach to enforcement, beginning with education. All fishing activity is subject to compliance verification by fishery officers, who conduct inspections across all fisheries regulated by the Department.”

The statement said that DFO’s approach to regulating fishing is consistent with the Marshall decisions, including Marshall II. Marshall II clarified that in addition to conservation, regulatory authority extends to other substantial public objectives, including conservation of fishery resources. This spokesperson also said that in Marshall II, the Supreme Court  “noted that the best way to implement treaties is to consult and negotiate modern agreements with First Nations.”

The honor of the Crown forms the basis of Canada’s relationship with Indigenous people; it affirms that governments made treaty promises and are obliged to fulfill them, Mi’kmaw legal scholar Naiomi Metallic says. In some ways, it’s an abstract concept (with roots in the British notion that servants of the Crown must act honorably) underpinning the ethical and moral legitimacy of the state. But as more Indigenous nations and individuals assert their rights, that concept is also developing some muscle, Metallic says—including in July 2024, when the Supreme Court affirmed that Canada had breached treaties with the Anishinaabe of the upper Great Lakes, and that the honor of the Crown created a legal duty to negotiate compensation, after years of ignoring obligations.

In fishing, there’s a particular set of unfilled promises, having to do with the Marshall decision and the treaties before it; from the perspective of Mi’kmaw communities the government has yet to make good on the promise of fishing rights.

Honor is not the only thing at stake in this situation. There’s the health of fish stocks, and the well-being of Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities looking to make a living from them. Yet underpinning it all are the promises made when Europeans and the Mi’kmaq were first learning to live together on this land. Those promises are neither historical artifacts nor pure aspiration. They’re living ties, with benefits—and obligations—for both sides, and they persist. And so, decades after the court issued the Marshall decision, honoring those promises is the path by which a shared future will be built.