Federal scientists and the Canadian Coast Guard have joined the flurry of scientific activity around the site of a massive landslide late last year in the Bute Inlet watershed on B.C.’s isolated central coast. Natural Resources Canada researcher Gwyn Lintern recently spent six days aboard the Coast Guard vessel Sir Wilfrid Laurier as part of the first federal marine investigation of the inlet following the slide on Nov. 28. A mountain slope, likely destabilized by glacial retreat due to climate change, plunged into a lake northeast of the inlet. The outburst created a torrent of millions of tonnes of earth, water and trees that carved up creek beds and river bottoms before spilling into the ocean at the head of the fjord.