Thank you for inviting me and allowing me to present at this committee.

I'm an associate professor of environmental science and geography at Carleton University. I have expertise in aquatic ecosystems, near-shore environments and how human activities can change near-shore environments.

As stated by my colleague Professor Colin Rennie, we've been collaborating on a research project. Colin discussed the experimental work we've been doing. Today I'll talk about some observational work on boat passes on the Rideau River that we've also just done. This is part of a larger NSERC-funded project.

In the summer of 2023, we carried out observations on boat passes at two sites on the Rideau River. The first was the W.A. Taylor conservation area at 3250 River Road in Ottawa, and the second was at Eccolands Park, again on River Road. Both sites are popular for boating because they have marinas or public boat launches that are available and free to use.

All of our observations on boat passes were made during the day—typically between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m.—and in weather considered good for boating. We weren't out when it was a rainy day, for example. That's what these observations were based on.

Our first observation, based on access to information data, was that recreational boating is very popular in Ontario. This is data from during the pandemic. On average, 18,400 new pleasure craft licences have been issued each year in Ontario from 2019 onward.

On the Rideau waterway, as is likely elsewhere, the number of recreational boat passes per hour was very site-specific and depended greatly on the weather and the day of the week—whether it was a weekend or a holiday, for example.

The Rideau system is popular for travelling longer distances. However, with the exception of cabin cruisers, most boats stayed within one section of the river and didn't transit the lock stations. Over 57 hours, we observed 838 boat passes. That's approximately 15 boat passes per hour, on average. Boat passes reached a maximum of 72 per hour during the August civic holiday long weekend. That also coincided with a fishing tournament near the site.

The most common boat types we observed were personal watercraft. Smaller motorboats were 21% of all boat passes, followed by fishing boats, such as small aluminum boats, at 18%. Cabin cruisers and yachts made up 14% of all boat passes. Bowriders and decked boats were 13%, and pontoon boats were 8.5%. Water sport boats as a combined category—water-skiing, wakeboarding or wakesurfing boats—accounted for 13.5% of all boat passes. Wakesurfing boats were fairly rare, accounting for only 2% of all boat passes we observed.

We also noted that no water sport activities were observed in posted no-wake zones on the canal at our sites close to marinas, suggesting that recreational boaters are respecting the posted no-wake zones near marinas.

Similar to the experimental work Colin mentioned, our observational study shows that cabin cruisers and wakesurfing boats produced the greatest wave heights on the Rideau Canal. The purpose of this observational work was to compare experimental work with the real-world situation of how boats are passing through and using the canal.

We're also currently investigating how recreational boating is influencing the underwater soundscape. Because I'm also an ecologist, I'm interested in that. There's very little data on that for fresh water. While we need to collect more data and analyze it, it's very clear that recreational boating is the dominant anthropogenic noise in the underwater soundscape in the Rideau waterway.

Thank you.