October 2003

Pipefish
Shenanigans
by Berry Wijdeven
Josina Davis is not having a good day. She is
hungry and desperate to find some food. A couple of crunchy pipefish
would sure hit the spot right now, but as long as the pipefish stay
motionless, they're perfectly camouflaged by the eelgrass.
There's some movement in the grass. Josina rushes
over, but by the time she gets to the disturbance, all is quiet again.
Life as a predator can be tough. Until some of the pipefish get the
giggles. For them it's game over.
I'm sitting in a classroom at the Port Clements
Elementary School with Nadine Whittle, the teacher of this kindergarten
grade1/2 class, observing the struggle for survival.
"Look at them," Nadine says. "They're having fun.
How often in life do you get to be a pipefish?"
Not that often, as a matter of fact, but you do in
Marine Matters, an educational program for 5 to 12 year olds. The
program is co-sponsored by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and World
Wildlife Fund Canada and is unique to Haida Gwaii. DFO recently
expanded its education program to add an ocean component, while WWF was
active coordinating the development of a Marine Strategy for the
Islands. Both sponsors saw the need for a locally relevant marine
education program and established a partnership. They contracted Josina
Davis, a local educator with a background in nature programs and drama,
to develop and deliver the program.
The goal of Marine Matters is to build
understanding and awareness of the surrounding ocean ecosystems and to
encourage a conservation and stewardship ethic. Last year, the first
year of the program, Josina taught 160 lessons in 24 classrooms
throughout all of Haida Gwaii, providing an introduction to ocean and
intertidal life. Feedback from students and teachers was overwhelmingly
positive, so the program returned for another year, this time with a
focus on specific ocean habitats.
Back in the classroom, Josina passes around a crab
moult. Initially some of the younger kids are a bit hesitant, wondering
if the crab is still alive. Or worse, dead and stinky. Most of them
have seen the moults littering the beach but they are amazed to learn
that crabs shed these “skins” every time they grow
bigger.
“I think the program she’s
offering is real to the kids, its real life,” says Mrs.
Whittle. “When you show them a globe, when you point your
finger at the Islands, to them it’s so strange because
it’s just so big and the Islands are so small. Whereas this
program relates back to their own world.”
Nadine asks the kids why they like
Josina’s visits to their classroom.
“She’s fun,” says
one of the kids. “I like it because she teaches us about the
creatures in the water.” Some kids like the songs, others
enjoy the crafts and stories. Most like learning about all the animals.
One boy likes the program because “Josina teaches us
everything except school stuff and math.” Not quite; within
minutes he is blissfully counting out animals and adding up creatures
on a map.
I ask Nadine how the Marine Matters program fits
in with her teaching.
“This fits in really well with
environmental science, it fits in really well with the science program,
it fits in all over. I look at the curriculum not as individual areas,
social studies, science, math. I try to tie all the activities
together.”
The kids have moved into a semi circle. Josina is
showing them how predators get their food. Sea stars
“smell” their prey with their arms and then remove
their stomach, slipping it right into the shell of their prey,
digesting the innards before reabsorbing the organ. The kids are
understandably intrigued, but how much of this information will be
retained? Nadine Whittle is not concerned.
“They tend to connect what we do. When
we’re talking about something they hear a word and go: oh
yeah, I remember that. It’s interconnected. Like what
she’s talking about right now, tubular mouths, we might be
talking about salmon and ask what kind of mouth do they have? Or
remember the crustaceans? They eat differently. So they’re
always tying it in, always trying to make those connections.
We’ll talk about it throughout the week and draw everything
back to things that they’ve learned from this
program.”
Near the end of the lesson, some of the kids are
standing by a table, staring intently at a jar filled with mud and
water. They’ve been given an assignment to find out what lies
hidden in the murky shadows. So far they’re not having much
luck in spite of repeated shaking of the jar to twirl the water around.
“There’s nothing
there,” says one of the girls. “It’s just
mud.”
She gives the jar one final shake and lets the mud
settle.
“I think I see something,” she
says. “There! There it is!”
The other kids see it too and are just as excited
about the discovery. It’s not much of a find, really, just a
clamshell hidden in the mud, but the kids approach the subject with
that sense of wonder seemingly reserved for children. Why do clams live
in the mud? How do they breathe? What do they eat? How can they see?
Josina tells them about life as a clam and within minutes the kids are
acting out being clams, moving on one leg, extending their siphons to
catch food. The classroom is transformed into a swaying clam bed. Later
on, there will be a field trip to a mudflat to look at actual critters,
but for now it’s mission accomplished; these kids
won’t look at a seemingly mundane mudflat the same way again.
“This is a great job,” she
says. “I can share my enthusiasm for the ocean and get to
have fun with the material. Many of the kids already have a great
interest living so close to the ocean. I just help them discover how it
all fits together.”
^
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Creative,
Headstrong and Driven
by Lynn Lee
Here I sit in my office, Ani deFranco sings about
a goldfish and his castle that is a surprise every time, and I wonder
at the irony of how trying to conserve nature requires so much time
inside. Beyond my small window, the spruce trees sway to the rhythm of
a southeaster and the alders surrender their leaves to its tempestuous
breath. Further afield, the ocean surface beats to the rhythm of the
storm. All appears to be well on this autumn day.
Yet below the surface, a crisis screams into the
southeast wind. In my native Chinese language, the character for
“crisis” stems from the characters for
“danger” and “opportunity”
– recognition of a turning point.
In a May 2002 workshop in Tlell, people of the
Haida Gwaii marine community gathered with marine conservationist
Elliott Norse to talk about this crisis. Discourse brewed around some
heady marine issues facing us as Islanders who want to restore and
maintain a vibrant and diverse marine culture. Amidst discussions from
herring to sport fishing lodges to marine protected areas, the message
was clear: A community-driven Marine Strategy for the waters around the
Islands was needed and needed now.
A Haida Gwaii/QCI Marine Strategy. What does that
mean and how does it fit into the web of marine planning? To start, we
need to look at who’s in charge of what. On the local front,
there’s the Council of the Haida Nation (CHN) who has laid
title over the land, sea and air around Haida Gwaii/QCI –
That would include the waters and seabed around us. Then
there’s the Province of British Columbia claiming mineral
title and the seabed of inshore waters whose boundaries are defined by
joining headland to headland along the coast. Although this seems like
a straightforward description, the lines defining inshore and offshore
waters are not very clear. Finally, there are numerous federal
government departments with jurisdiction over the water itself (inshore
and offshore), fisheries resources and fish habitat, ocean ecosystem
health, migratory bird habitat, species at risk, the seabed of offshore
waters and marine transportation.
Next, let’s have a look at what marine
planning processes are currently in place or on the horizon? The CHN
and the Province have initiated a co-managed Land Use Planning Process
(LUPP). Although the LUPP only considers values and issues above the
high tide line, a similarly co-managed marine planning process is
anticipated within the next year and a half. This marine process would
likely include those values below the high tide line currently under
provincial jurisdiction, including foreshore leases for developments
such as shellfish farming, log dump and booming sites and fishing lodge
sites. Perhaps the federal government will also be involved,
considering values under their authority. Already, marine mapping is
taking place as part of the Coast Information Team work through the
Province, in anticipation of marine planning for Haida Gwaii/QCI, the
North Coast and the Central Coast.
Through Turning Point, the Haida Nation along with
other coastal First Nations from the Central and North Coasts are
poised to embark on a marine planning process with Fisheries and Oceans
Canada (DFO) through the Oceans Act. And also through the Oceans Act,
the Haida are working with DFO, industry and conservation groups to
establish the proposed Bowie Seamount Marine Protected Area.
With the recently passed National Marine
Conservation Areas (NMCA) Act, a planning process to establish the
proposed Gwaii Haanas NMCA reserve in South Moresby is imminent. A
co-management agreement mirroring the Gwaii Haanas National Park and
Haida Heritage Site Archipelago Management Board is expected.
Cooperation between federal agencies Parks Canada, Fisheries and Oceans
Canada and Transport Canada would also be required, in addition to
meaningful consultation with local communities and interest groups to
define an effective ecosystem-based management plan for the area.
Recent articles in the local paper seem to
indicate movement forward for the proposed Gwaii Haanas NMCA reserve.
The boundaries of the Gwaii Haanas Marine Area were drawn and a promise
towards its establishment made 15 years ago with the signing of the
Gwaii Haanas Agreement. The oil companies relinquished their mineral
rights within the boundaries in 1997. The Province agreed to relinquish
any rights that it might have on the seabed within the boundaries for
the establishment of the NMCA reserve. The NMCA Act was passed through
parliament in June 2002. And most recently, on October 2, 2003, a joint
federal-provincial announcement in Vancouver named the Gwaii Haanas
NMCA reserve as one of three sites (2 NMCAs and 1 National Park) of
high priority for establishment in BC. Amongst all three sites, $65
million was promised to be spent.
All this sounds very positive but the reality of
the situation is that progress over the past 15 years has been
glacially slow and much work remains to be done. The CHN and federal
government have not agreed on a co-management arrangement. Different
federal departments, particularly DFO and Parks Canada, have not
internally defined a working relationship around NMCAs. And despite
government promises of money and imminent public consultation about
Gwaii Haanas, committed dollars remain elusive. Add to this a general
public distrust of government and strong vested business interests in
fisheries resources, and the soup gets pretty thick.
Then add the eclectic local community directly
linked in social, economic and research activities dependent on the
enduring ecological health of the Haida Gwaii/QCI marine area. The
too-numerous-to-list conservation and stewardship groups based on the
Islands conduct and support research and outreach activities that
broaden our collective understanding of the natural world around us.
Other groups focus their work on salmon, salmon enhancement and
habitat, and salmon fisheries. A Heritage Tourism Strategy defines our
perspective on how we as Islanders relate to our environment, marine
and terrestrial. There are subsistence, recreational and commercial
fisher people; fishery license holders; tourism operators; shellfish
aquaculturists; fish processors; sportsfishing guides; sportsfishing
lodges; local governments and people who appreciate the ocean simply
because it is. All these perspectives and more are the patchwork quilt
that is our Islands marine community.
So in a convoluted way, we wind up back at a Haida
Gwaii/QCI Marine Strategy – community and conservation
driven. There are many outside powers that have and continue to define
how and what will be done with the marine area around us. Even so the
winds of change are blowing. More and more, the CHN is a governance
partner in decision-making around the Islands. The public voice in
marine management is slowly but surely gaining sway in government
decisions most notably with regard to local areas. Although it will
take a lot of hard work and great patience to see through one
another’s eyes, the people of these Islands have the ability
and the will. Because we live here, because we rely upon the health of
this place for our well-being, the time has come for us to talk about
what we want for our future and decide on courses of action that will
take us there.
So you have it – the raison
d’etre for an Islands Marine Strategy. It is a living
discussion about where we want to get to and how we can get there from
here. Think of it as a blueprint guiding the construction of our marine
future. Some of the tools we need to build from include existing
legislation such as the NMCA Act, the Fisheries Act and the Oceans Act.
Others will be innovative tools of our own design – after
all, Islanders are nothing if not creative and headstrong.
To continue discussions initiated in May, a
workshop was held in December 2002. Many issues were discussed.
Abalone. Salmon farming. Shellfish mariculture. Dungeness crab. General
fishery management. Geoduck. Halibut. Herring. Krill. Lingcod. Local
economy. Marine protected areas. Offshore oil and gas. Razor clam. Red
sea urchin. Rockfishes. Sea otter. Sportsfishery. Trawlers/Draggers.
Wild salmon. All were identified as important to Islanders at that
meeting in Tlell which closed with a commitment to get together again
to share information and ideas, debate issues and solutions.
Many people and agencies are actively involved in
field research and compilation of existing marine information. Part of
our work is to gather these together and map additional information to
spur discussions around our values as a marine community. What and
where are some of the tangible marine values surrounding us? What kinds
of activities are occurring and where? What are the impacts of those
activities on our environment? What activities do we support as a
community and what might be their limits for development? What
activities do we believe too great a risk? What are our immediate
marine concerns and potential solutions to them?
To maintain momentum, we are aiming to host
another Haida Gwaii/QCI Marine Strategy planning workshop in late
November or early December 2003 to further our discussions and show and
tell the information we have to date. ETA for a draft Haida Gwaii/QCI
Marine Strategy? December 2004. The time is ripe for the Islands
community to take marine matters into their own hands and on these
Islands, having a deadline to shoot for is half the battle.
Invitations and agendas will be forwarded shortly
to those who have received information about past workshops. If you are
not currently receiving information but wish to in the future, please
contact me at Marine Matters.
“Speak with one voice and people will
listen. Let me tell a story. There was a father with five boys that
constantly fought and were jealous of each other. One day the father
tossed an arrow to the biggest and strongest boy and told him to break
it. The boy did without any trouble. He then gave a whole pile of
arrows to his son and told him to break them all at once. The boy could
not. Others will listen if you can find a way to work
together.” ~ Elliott Norse. May 2002, Tlell
^
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For
the Love of Limpets
by Michele Deakin
So common to us, yet hardly noticeable on rocks,
limpets seem so slow, dull…and yes, simple. At least so I
thought until I learned about their homing habit. Limpets return to sit
on the exact same spot over and over again! Think about this: Returning
requires memory and memory requires intelligence. If a limpet has
enough intelligence to know its home, what else are the species capable
of?
This muse is what endeared me to limpets. How
completely amazing and freeing to think of a limpet as capable of
intelligent thought! With that, I started hunting for information and
discovered thousands of websites related to this unassuming mollusc.
A member of the largest and most diverse group of
marine invertebrates, limpets are related to oysters, clams, octopus,
chitons and mores. Together, they form the phylum group Mollusca. Like
most molluscs, the limpet has a soft body with three sections - a head,
a muscular foot, and a mass of body organs. Protected up top by the
hard flattened cone-shaped shell we beachcombers know, the limpet is a
hard case to crack.
Limpets have no trap door otherwise known as an
operculum, to protect their bodies from sun and predators, so they
clamp their foot down with amazing strength and cling tightly to their
spot on a rock. When touched by waves, predators, or inquisitive
fingers, they suction their shell to the rocks, perfectly sealing out
the world. Being able to exert up to 90 pounds of force keeps the
limpet anchored in high water or when being licked by a hungry sea
star.
Just as they are affected by the elements around
them, limpets also impact the ecosystem they live in. Active mainly at
night and when covered by water, limpets use their long tube-like
toothed tongue, or radula, to scrape marine algae off rocks. Studies in
Europe have shown that this grazing activity dictates the type and
amount of algal growth in an area. In fact, one study found that if all
the limpets in a location were killed by oil pollution, weedy algal
growth would be extensive for several years, reducing local biological
diversity. The algal growth would decrease when limpets returned to
clear areas, thus creating space for barnacles and other sessile
(attached non-moving) animals to live.
The most interesting fact I learned is that
studies on their homing habit have not yet resolved the question of how
limpets achieve this feat. Researchers have colour-coded spots on rocks
and matched the spots to limpets. Although these studies confirm that
limpets do indeed return to the same spot when the tide changes, there
is no explanation of how they do this. Their poorly developed sensory
organs are of little or no use to aid in this endeavour. Generally
unaccepting of the idea that limpets may have memory, other scientists
have tested chemical reactions or responses to physical setting, but
despite all this research, the mechanics remain a mystery.
The next time I'm at the beach, I'll be searching
out the mystery and beauty of this common little mollusc. It's wonders
like this that give us a fresh perspective on our place - and how we
relate to our spot on earth.
^
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The
Cost of Good Taste
by Lynn Lee
Abalone. These mild-mannered molluscs are at the
center of a game of international intrigue. Funded at times by drug
money, poachers are bought shiny new boats with fast motors to supply
abalone to the insatiable, high priced black market. Although poachers
may have had experience in commercial shellfish fisheries, abalone
poaching is thought to occur outside these legal fisheries. Instead,
poachers take advantage of remote nooks and crannies in British
Columbia’s extended coastline to hunker down and fish for
abalone.
In a recent case, poachers on the Central Coast
were processing abalone off a barge disguised as a small logging
operation. Its discovery was made by accident when provincial
conservation officers, looking for illegal game hunting, stopped to
check a suspicious looking freezer truck near Terrace. Instead of deer
or moose, they found a freezer-load of abalone. Detective work traced
the freezer back to the barge. Under the barge, divers discovered over
7,000 empty abalone shells of every size.
Why should we care? We should care because
BC’s northern abalone populations are now so low, they were
listed as threatened in 1999 by the Committee on the Status of
Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). After 10 years of coast-wide
closure on all abalone fishing, the populations still do not show signs
of natural rebuilding. Poaching is suspected throughout the coast and
while the real extent of poaching activities is not known, it is likely
that few poachers are caught and that the numbers are significant. One
thing is for certain. So long as there’s money to be made in
abalone, poaching will continue.
Facing the fact that the coast-wide closure was
ineffective at restoring BC’s abalone populations, the
federal government allocated funding to initiate community-based
abalone stewardship programs. Thus began the Haida Gwaii Abalone
Stewards, a partnership of community groups and agencies on Haida
Gwaii/Queen Charlotte Islands working together to address the problem
of the lonely abalone. This eclectic stewardship group is made up of
First Nations (Haida Fisheries Program, Skidegate Band Council, Old
Massett Village Council), conservation organizations (World Wildlife
Fund Canada and Laskeek Bay Conservation Society), local community
groups (Haida Gwaii Marine Resources Group Association), and federal
government agencies (Parks Canada Gwaii Haanas, Fisheries and Oceans
Canada and Environment Canada).
Recognizing that there was more than one possible
reason for the continued lack of abalone recovery, the group developed
a Community Action Plan through public consultation that tried to
address many of the problems on the local level. Key elements of the
Action Plan are communication and outreach, research, increased field
surveillance and establishment of abalone stewardship areas.
Why are abalone not recovering? There are
ecological and human factors that have contributed, although the
specific impact of each is not known. It’s a fact that years
of intensive fishing throughout the late 70’s and
80’s significantly reduced abalone populations. During those
years of legal commercial fishing, an extensive illegal harvest was
also taking place such that actual landings were much greater than
those reported at the dock. Extensive poaching continues today, further
hampering abalone recovery.
What is not known is what needs to be done to
allow abalone populations to thrive once again. This is where the
research fits in. Since 1998, the Haida Fisheries Program has been
working with Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) to try and answer some
of these tough questions. Are there now so few abalone spread over such
a wide area that they cannot reproduce successfully? Will aggregating
spawning abalone in smaller areas increase their reproductive success?
Are there habitat-related issues that are limiting survival at
different life stages? Is there significant competition for food with
other herbivores such as sea urchins? Or is predation by humans and
other animals the main problem?
The establishment of two abalone stewardship
areas, one at the north end and one at the south end of Haida Gwaii, is
vital to rebuilding efforts. Here, focused stewardship efforts can
ensure that poaching levels are reduced and hopefully eliminated within
the research sites. Monitoring of control and experimental sites within
stewardship areas and comparison of abalone abundance inside and
outside the sites may begin to tell the story about why abalone
populations are not recovering.
Through outreach and education, the stewardship
group is broadening public understanding about the plight of abalone.
Brochures, factsheets and public presentations help spread the word. A
school curriculum to teach the younger generation about abalone has
also been developed and implemented in elementary schools throughout
the Islands. Many of these children have never even seen a live abalone!
Implementation of the Abalone Watch program will
increase surveillance for poaching activities. Similar to
DFO’s CoastWatch program, AbWatch will engage the community
of people on the waters around the Islands in awareness and reporting
of suspicious activities. The Haida Watchmen, tour operators, fishing
lodges, local guides and other marine adventurers will help protect
local abalone.
The Haida Gwaii Abalone Stewards hope to see
abalone populations around Haida Gwaii recover to numbers that will
once again support small food fisheries. Even in the presence of
voracious sea otters, Haida people harvested abalone for many
generations. Traditionally, they were only harvested in the intertidal
zone by handpicking or in the shallow subtidal using a two-pronged
spear. These methods meant that abalone in the deeper parts of their
habitat were always protected from human harvest. If abalone can ever
be harvested again, restrictions such as these would be vital to a
responsible fishery.
It will take a lot of work, perseverance and faith
for the Islands community to once again savour the delicate taste of
abalone. It is a lofty goal considering that no other abalone fishery
in the world has ever reopened once closed for conservation reasons.
With the communities’ support, the Haida Gwaii Abalone
Stewards believe it’s possible here.
^
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As
Good As It Gets
by Berry Wijdeven
They had been sailing for twenty hours, out on the
open Pacific, bucking a nasty headwind for most of the night. A few
times, they debated turning back for shore. By morning the sea had
calmed and a big red sun rose out of the water to meet a blue, blue
sky. It promised to be a spectacular day and spirits on the 32-foot
long Excalibur were high. Skipper Brian Fuhr, his wife Kathleen and son
Ian were excited. Unlike previous attempts, it looked like this year
they might actually succeed - the Bowie Seamount was within reach.
Brian took a final reading off the brand new DFO
chart, the result of a recent multi-beam survey of the area. The chart
was said to be extraordinarily accurate and had provided the crew with
much of the confidence to make the trip. Brian fixed their position
with the GPS unit, confirming what he had hoped for. They had reached
the desired coordinates - the Bowie Seamount. He turned on the depth
sounder, and stared in disbelief at the empty screen. Nothing. No
telltale contours, no jagged shadows indicating a landmass of any kind.
The depth sounder showed nothing but miles and miles of endless,
bottomless ocean.
Brian first heard about the Bowie nearly a decade
ago. At the time, he was part of the Skeena Region team charged with
assessing the ecological areas in the region, looking for the most
promising ones in terms of conservation, recreation and cultural
values. Says Brian: “Obviously the Bowie Seamount stands out
if you’re talking about the best of the best. In terms of
fish productivity, uniqueness, a seamount is as good as it
gets.”
Seamounts are underwater mountains created through
volcanic action. They rise steeply through the water column without
reaching the surface, although some come close. While there are a
number of seamounts in Canadian waters, the Bowie is by far the
shallowest, rising from a depth of 3100 meters to within 25 meters of
the ocean surface. And while its base is almost 55 kilometres long, the
summit is but the size of a large living room.
The Bowie Seamount is located approximately 180 km
west of Haida Gwaii/Queen Charlotte Islands. It is considered to be
relatively young, having formed less than a million years ago.
Scientists believe that during the last ice age, it was an active
volcanic island. Sea levels were much lower then, and there is evidence
of wave erosion on the seamount, as well as Haida knowledge of Sgaan
Qintlas (Bowie), to support this theory.
Like other seamounts, the Bowie supports a rich
ecosystem. Ocean currents welling up from the base of the seamount
provide deep-ocean nutrients to phytoplankton and zooplankton near the
surface. These in turn form the base for an elaborate food web. There
are crabs, sea stars, anemones and barnacles. Wolf eel, octopus and
sleeper sharks. Stellar sea lions, seals and white-sided dolphins.
Albatross, storm petrels and sooty shearwaters. All make the seamount
their home or stop over during their travels.
Aside from scientific curiosity, what has
attracted humans to the seamount has been the fish. The Bowie is rich
fishing ground, supporting vast quantities of sablefish (black cod),
turbot, sole, skate and halibut as well as a stupendous quantity of
various rockfish.
Rockfish most likely travel to the Bowie as
larvae, but once they get there, they’re stuck for life.
Surrounded by a vast deep ocean, there’s little chance to
make it back to the continental shelf. Allowing an extensive harvest
would therefore be a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. And while the
schools at the seamount are plentiful, it wouldn’t take much
effort to wipe them out.
Says Brian: “The Cobb Seamount which is
just outside the 200 mile limit off the coast of Washington was fished
to very low levels of rockfish in less than five years. If you read
some of the Bowie background report, you’ll see there
actually have been some significant species shifts even out at the
Bowie.”
As a result, fishing on the Bowie has been
severely curtailed, by scientific permit only, and in 1998, then
Fisheries Minister David Anderson announced that the Bowie Seamount was
being considered as a pilot Marine Protected Area for its rich
biological productivity, potential role as a biological oasis and
potential staging area for migrating birds and mammals.
But in order to observe the Bowie ecosystem, you
first have to find it and the crew of the Excalibur wasn’t
having much success.
“This was our worse case scenario that
we’ve thought about and even discussed,” says
Brian. “Actually getting there and not being able to find it.
So it had to be a simple mistake, right?”
First the crew double-checked their GPS
coordinates, their conversions and chart datum. All seemed to be in
order. They then started zigzagging the surrounding ocean, hoping to
locate something on their depth sounder. After an hour or so of staring
at the blank screen, they came to the realization that this was not the
way they were going to find the needle in the haystack.
“We were becoming desperate. The
afternoon was clicking away, we were having absolute perfect weather
conditions. Not a breath of wind. The albatrosses were swimming in the
water, there wasn’t enough wind to fly.”
It had taken the crew three tries over three years
to find a weather window suited to their small boat. Now that they had
made it all the way out here, they weren’t about to give up
that easily. Brian pulled out his ace in the hole: a satellite phone.
With it, he could contact the mainland to get information regarding the
actual location of the seamount. But where to start?
“I phoned Fisheries and Oceans, the guys
responsible for the Bowie Seamount program and I tried the scientific
authority there, listed as the Canadian Hydrographic Service. And of
course you get messages and voice mails and things. I went through
everything I could think of and got nowhere.”
As a last resort, Brian contacted the National
Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Seattle, Washington,
after noting that they had provided the ship used for the survey which
formed the basis of the chart. After bouncing around their phone system
for a while, he finally got connected with Kim Sampadian.
“You are WHERE?” Kim said
incredulously and then informed him that, yes, she had been a member of
the survey team, and yes, she had the data, but unfortunately she was
in the middle of moving so everything was in boxes and
couldn’t really be accessed. Brian’s heart sank.
This had been his last hope. Kim offered to have a quick look and call
back.
“So here we bobbed around on the ocean,
watching the blank depth sounder for about half an hour or so and the
phone rang in the middle of the ocean. And it’s my angel from
NOAA who said: ‘OK, I’ve got that number for you.
Your latitude is right on, but your longitude is off.’
”
After thanking Kim, the crew sailed the Excalibur
in the indicated direction and BANG, up popped the Bowie on the depth
sounder. They had made it.
Because the Bowie is one of the few seamounts that
come within reach of the ocean surface, its one of the few diveable
seamounts in the world. This is what they had been looking forward to
all this time - diving the Bowie. But while Brian and Ian were both
experienced divers, this was still a high risk dive.
“You don’t have any second
chances out there and you don’t have any backup,”
says Brian. “So it was not a dive to take lightly. And we
were actually surprised by how much current there was, probably half a
knot. You had to swim to stay beside the boat. We’ve been in
the water offshore before, but this had our full attention.”
After checking their equipment, they started the
dive.
“It was beautiful. It was maybe two in
the afternoon, sun’s high, middle of the summer, it
doesn’t get any better. And we looked down and I thought I
could see the bottom. We went down another 30 feet or so and realized
it wasn’t the bottom at all. It was all rockfish, a cloud of
rockfish.”
When they descended to the top of the seamount,
they were in for a treat.
“The bottom was solidly, solidly packed
with life. Stuff growing everywhere. Fish everywhere. Unusual fish,
things you don’t see onshore. And the most remarkable
congregation of rockfish I have ever seen.”
They feasted their eyes, trying to take it all in,
trying not to get too excited. To breathe slowly and stretch their
oxygen supply. All too soon, however, fifteen minutes later, it was
time to return to the surface. On the boat, they had a quick
celebration before sailing back to the protection of Haida Gwaii,
mission accomplished.
For Brian, sailing and diving the Bowie was the
culmination of a lifetime of exploring.
“I enjoyed the sheer determination of
wanting to explore every possible avenue we could to try to find that
location. The chances of finding a weather window as perfect as that,
convincing your crew that we should go to this much trouble to try such
a crazy thing again. It’s pretty remote. It’s
easily a once in a lifetime thing.”
It’s been six years since the Bowie
Seamount was announced as a candidate pilot Marine Protected Area.
Since then, the study area has been expanded to incorporate the
adjacent Hodgkins and Davidson Seamounts in an effort to capture more
of an ecosystem approach. Work has progressed on the compilation of an
ecosystem overview report, exploration of a co-management agreement
with the Haida, and consultation with stakeholders. There is, however,
still some way to go. It took six years for the Endeavour Hot Vents to
be declared an MPA and after six years, the Bowie appears nowhere near
that close.
In an effort to speed up the process, World
Wildlife Fund Canada (WWF), Pacific Division, released a research paper
in June of this year entitled Management Direction for the Bowie
Seamount MPA. The intent of the paper is to address conservation,
research and fishing requirements within the proposed MPA and provide
direction for the development of a management plan. WWF anticipates
that the paper will expedite the designation of the Bowie Seamount as a
Marine Protected Area. We can hope. For in the words of Brian Fuhr, the
Bowie Seamount is as good as it gets.
To read the WWF research paper go to: http://www.wwf.ca/NewsAndFacts/Resources.asp?type=resources
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Nudibranchs
Exposed or You Are What You Eat
by Berry Wijdeven
At first glance you'd think nudibranchs wouldn't
stand much of a chance, out there in the wild and woolly ocean waters.
Without any obvious defense mechanisms they appear pretty exposed.
Nudibanchs are shell-less snails which roam across the ocean floor
without so much as an inch of protective armour, naked, with their
lungs (gills) located on the outside of their body for all the world to
see. Or chew.
To add insult to injury, nudibranchs are nearly
blind, able to differentiate only between light and dark. Speed cannot
save them; nudibranchs are slugs, related to clams and chitons and
crawl around at well, a snails pace. They also can’t just
blend into their environment as many nudibranchs are festooned with
brilliant colours ranging from orange and yellow to electric blue and
neon green.
Size isn‘t always on their side either,
for while some nudibranchs are pretty small, others are the size of
watermelons, making inconspicuousness difficult. Even scientists have
given nudibranchs little respect, calling them names such as Shaggy
Mouse, Sea Lemon or Clown nudibranch. In short, the odds seem to be
stacked against them. Yet nudibranchs have managed to flourish, with
more than 3,200 species found the world over.
So how do nudibranchs manage to survive, and
thrive, in this seemingly hostile environment? Charm? A sense of
humour? Hardly! Truth is, nudibranchs are not quite the meek
defenseless creatures they appear to be. They are fierce predators,
feared by sponges, anemones, tube worms, sea squirts, barnacles and
jellyfish alike. To compensate for their limited eyesight, they use two
chemosensory antennae (rhinospores) on their head to locate their prey
by smell. Once they have “sniffed out” a suitable
victim, they use rows of tiny barbed teeth to pierce the protective
shells or scrape off morsels of food.
Eating this prey can be tricky since many of the
nudibranch’s targets have developed defence mechanisms such
as the release of poisonous or distasteful chemicals or the presence of
stinging cells to scare off predators. But in a brilliant evolutionary
adaptation nudibranchs have not only learned to cope with these
chemical impediments, they have managed to turn them to their
advantage. They have found a way to absorb and metabolize the bitter or
poisonous substances, the stinging cells or tiny spines of their prey
and incorporate them into their own defense system. As a result, fish
trying to eat nudibranchs have been seen spitting them back out, turned
off by the bitterness or stinging sensation. And the bright colours of
the nudibranchs, rather than being a liability, appear to remind the
fish to stay away from these objectionable creatures.
Interestingly enough, when nudibranchs are born
they do have shells while they limit themselves to a diet of plankton.
When they get older and switch to the more hearty diet of bitter
tasting things and itchy, stingy critters, they loose this protection,
counting instead on their newly acquired stomach-turning talents for
survival, proving again the old saying that you are what you eat.
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