Critter Count

GB has had pretty fair success at fishing, having caught a variety of rockfish, sole, salmon, greenling and lingcod in various places around Vancouver Island. However, we had both expected, given how often he has fished, to have had better luck. Many of the other cruisers (and locals) we have met have said that they haven’t caught much this year despite having seen sport fishermen dragging in some fairly large salmon and halibut here and there. Even the crabs went AWOL this year: nobody we spoke to in any anchorage caught any legal-size crabs anywhere we traveled in BC with the exception of Echo Bay in the Broughtons. Odd.

At first I thought it must be something we did or didn’t do. But then I realized that during our entire circumnavigation of Vancouver Island, I saw few if any of the large marine mammals that feed on salmon, halibut and large crustaceans. Although to our delight we have seen a number of gray and humpback whales (some of them really close, man!) that feed on small aquatic life, we have seen no orca - not one. Actually we haven’t seen an orca in four years, and we’ve been out on the water a lot. During the 6 months we traveled in BC this year, we saw hardly any sea lions - one group on a small rocky island in the Strait of Georgia on the Inside Passage; and one lone sea lion in Kyuquot Sound on the West side of Vancouver Island. That’s it. We’ve seen very few harbor seals for that matter, and except for a family of four I saw hauled-out in Nootka Sound, the handful we’ve spotted have been lone travelers, too. We saw some sea otters on the West side, but like the other large mammals they were always alone and few in number. I can only conclude that regardless of what fish the sport fishermen are bringing in, there are not enough to sustain any significant populations of marine mammals.

How bad can it get? I remember in late 2004 we had a spectacular early-morning light show when at anchor in Barkley Sound we were awakened by thumping on the hull at 3:00am. Peeking outside and thinking we must have an errant log bumping up against us, we instead saw green-glowing bioluminescence lighting up the water in the shape of fast-moving salmon, followed by very large sweeps of light outlining the sea lions that were chasing them. The whole bay was lit up with signs of the hunt and in the distant darkness the sea lions surfaced with loud snorts. What a show.

This year, in August, 2007, in the same anchorage, we found that decomposing vegetable matter had turned the water an opaque rust color - no more than a few feet visibility - and there was no bioluminescence, anywhere. Few signs of the little aquatic critters means few signs of the bigger aquatic critters.

I miss all of them. I hope this is just an off-year, and not a trend.

Let’s now discuss the critters we actually have met on and around Vancouver Island. Whales: I sure saw more of them, in more places, than I expected. I believe we’ve seen a fairly even mix of humpbacks and grays, but I’m no Cousteau so let’s just call them Big Ol’ Cetaceans. BOCs.

We saw BOCs near and far. Far is fun, near is a thrill - we saw a pretty exuberant BOC at the entrance to Nootka Sound, a couple hundred yards to port. REAL close is a post hoc thrill, if you get my drift. We had this gray whale BOC show up? In the fog. With ½ mile visibility or less. As we left Canada and crossed the US Precautionary Zone in the verrryyyy busy commercial traffic channel going in and out of the Strait of Juan de Fuca (Seattle and Tofino Vessel Traffic controllers staying on their toes on the VHF radio, faint outlines of large, fast, container ships far enough away but still too close for comfort, lumpy seas, and us feeling very much like a turtle trying to cross a 6-lane freeway). At the very center of the Precautionary Zone, near the center-channel ocean buoy, we suddenly see the rear third of a gray whale diving under the Fox. And I mean, he went UNDER the boat, Jim. How close? Twelve feet off the beam. I am not making this up. How did I know for sure this was a gray whale? Because he was so close I could count the barnacles on his flukes. And identify their species.* If he had exhaled before he dove we would have been soaked with whale snot. He came from nowhere out of the fog, he vanished into nowhere in the fog. In total silence. THAT, dear readers, is spooky. When this happens to you (if I may paraphrase Jonathan Raban), your first reaction is not the happy reaction of camera-ready whale-watchers; you first reaction is:

YEEEAAAAGGGHHHHHH!!!! WH-WH-WH-AAAAAALLLLLLE!

(No; I do not have a picture.)

And yes; five minutes afterwards (OK, 15), it was Real Cool.

* Thatched barnacles. Semibalanus cariosus.

m