Susan R. Eaton

Born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Susan has lived and worked across Canada's North for the past seven years. Susan looks forward to sharing her knowledge and insights on the geologically stunning areas in the Arctic, introducing visitors to a sense of place where geology informs biology, human occupation, culture, and sustainability.

Based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Susan is registered as a professional geologist and geophysicist with NAPEG, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists. Her career in earth sciences (mining, oil & gas, and environmental consulting) has taken her from the Arctic to Antarctica, across Canada and the USA, and to Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. As a member of the board of directors of Geothermal Canada, a not-for-profit organization committed to advancing science and promoting geothermal research and development in Canada, Susan is a proponent of introducing geothermal energy across Canada's North (Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut).

Susan holds a B.Sc. honours degree in geology and biology from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a B.J. honours degree in journalism from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and an M.Sc. in petroleum geology (geophysics specialization) from the Royal School of Mines, Imperial College London, University of London. 

Susan began her media career as an on-camera news reporter with CBC-TV in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Today, as a freelance writer, Susan reports on science and technology, business, energy, the environment, water, space, geotourism, and adventure travel. Her articles and photographs have been published in Canadian, American, and international magazines and newspapers, including The Geographer, Water Canada, Canadian Geographic, Ocean Geographic, Outpost, Popular Mechanics, Explorer, DIVER Magazine, ALERT Diver, DivePhotoGuide, New Technology, Alberta Oil, Business Edge, Financial Post, the Edmonton Journal, and the Calgary Herald.

In 2024, Susan was elected as a member of the Society of Women Geographers. She is an inductee of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, a Fellow International of The Explorers Club (TEC), and a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS). In 2021, The Explorers Club included Susan in its inaugural TEC Class of 50, Fifty People Changing the World Who You Should Know About. In 2015, the RCGS named Susan one of Canada’s top 100 modern-day explorers and trailblazers. A year later, the RCGS named her one of Canada’s 25 greatest female explorers.

Susan explores the world’s oceans—from the Arctic to Antarctica—in the snorkel zone, a unique land-sea-ice-air interface where charismatic animals and snorkellers commingle. She's come face to mask with charging leopard seals in Antarctica, so close that she could inspect their tri-serrated teeth and count the freckles on their tongues and upper palates. Susan has snorkelled with curious and chatty belugas in Churchill, Manitoba, and has snorkelled past black bears as she counted migrating coho salmon with the Haida Fisheries Program in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. 

Since 2010, Susan has participated (as an earth scientist, journalist, and polar snorkeller) in ten science-based expeditions to study climate change in the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, the Western Antarctic Peninsula, Newfoundland, Labrador, Nunatsiavut, Nunavut, western and eastern Greenland, Arctic Norway, Svalbard, Iceland, and the Sea of the Hebrides (Scotland). Susan led seven of these expeditions to scout, document, and record warming polar seas, providing opportunities for Indigenous and non-Indigenous women and non-binary, two-spirit, and gender diverse explorers to participate in polar ocean research and dive and snorkel expeditions. 

Susan joined Adventure Canada's family of explorers a decade ago. Some of her memorable Adventure Canada expeditions include working as the ship’s geologist from Quebec City to St. John’s, Newfoundland, with many stops in between. As Adventure Canada’s researcher-in-residence during an expedition from southwest Greenland to Nunavut and the eastern section of the Northwest Passage, Susan led a team of women who conducted snorkel and dive operations and ran underwater robot camps in Sisimiut, Greenland, and Mittimatalik, Nunavut, bringing the ocean to eye level for Inuit and northern youth. In 2025, Susan interpreted (via lectures, rock workshops, Zodiac cruises, and hikes ashore) four billion years of tectonic forces that created the jaw-dropping geological features encountered during the Greenland and Wild Labrador: A Torngat Mountains Adventure expedition.