{"id":4344,"date":"2020-02-25T09:11:58","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T17:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/?p=4344"},"modified":"2020-02-25T09:11:58","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T17:11:58","slug":"behind-hakai-shawn-hateley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/behind-hakai-shawn-hateley\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind Hakai: Shawn Hateley"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Finn Short<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Shawn Hateley is a jack of all trades\u2014part engineer, part computer scientist, part builder, part programmer, part detective, and a little bit of everything else. When a sensor stops working, Shawn is there to solve the mystery of why it happened and figure out how to fix it. Solutions vary. Reasons why a sensor stops working range from wear and tear to ice to lightning to a wolf chewing through your cable. No two days are alike.<\/p>\n

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What do you do at the Hakai Institute?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I have a few roles. I look after general IT stuff, like computer hardware, or my printer is broken kind of problems. I also help out with the facilities, especially the automation side of things. We have alarms and sensors to make sure all of the equipment and infrastructure is working.<\/span><\/p>\n

For instance, if the water filtration system on Calvert Island springs a leak, you could lose all your water really quickly. Or the Marna Lab<\/a> on Quadra Island. There are salmon and shellfish in tanks, so we always need to know if the seawater is flowing properly into the tanks. We\u2019ve automated things to send an alert anytime something needs fixing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then the big task I work on is the sensor network, especially for the hardware side of things, such as installing sensors, and making sure the data gets sent where it needs to go.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Shawn Hateley fixes a wire on a weather sensor on top of Mount Buxton on Calvert Island. Photo by Grant Callegari<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What\u2019s your favorite part about working at Hakai?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The best thing about working with scientists is that they always want to do something a bit different. It\u2019s unusual to have scientists give you instructions to implement a system that\u2019s been done before. That almost never happens. It always requires some kind of one-off solution.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also love when an email pops up asking me for help\u2014a problem I get to solve and at the same time helping someone out. I love fixing interesting problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

What got you into this kind of work?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

My dad was a builder and a close family friend got us our first computer when I was five. Growing up whatever opportunities came along to blend those two things together, I took it. In school, I studied technical theater and pursued that for quite a while\u2014sound, set design, rigging, costumes, and lighting.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never had formal training in engineering or computer science. All of it has been on-the-job training.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Hakai’s KC oceanography buoy is brought in for maintenance. Shawn Hateley played a key logistics role to ensure the buoy was removed from the water safely and successfully returned to the ocean a month later. Photo by Katie Pocock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What\u2019s your favorite project you\u2019ve worked on?<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Lately my favorite has been the KC Buoy<\/a>. We just put that back in the water last week. It was probably because I took on more responsibility. I\u2019d never worked on a mooring before. It was integrating a whole new sensor system we\u2019ve never worked with before\u2014taking this new sensor system, getting the existing sensor network to talk to it, and get the data back out, and the newness of this large marine platform.<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s one aspect of your job you could do without?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Shipping and transportation to Calvert is definitely a challenge. You have to be prepared and ready for anything. It\u2019s harder to improvise. Oh, and I could do with fewer printer problems.<\/span><\/p>\n

What new challenges are you excited about?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Everywhere we go is a little different. We might have figured out how to install a certain sensor in a stream on Calvert Island. Now, we\u2019re going somewhere else like the Homathko watershed, and we have glacial runoff where you can\u2019t see an inch into the water. It\u2019s always something.<\/span><\/p>\n

*This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shawn Hateley is a jack of all trades\u2014part engineer, part computer scientist, part builder, part programmer, part detective, and a little bit of everything else. When a sensor stops working, Shawn is there to solve the mystery of why it <\/p>\n

…<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4384,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4344"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4344"}],"version-history":[{"count":56,"href":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4417,"href":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4344\/revisions\/4417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakai.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}