Black Bears on the Boardwalk and Grizzlies of the Deep

With the draw of whales near Telegraph Cove, its easy to forget the other major mammals in the area, both on land and in the water. Telegraph Cove is built up on boardwalks along the coast, and one morning this young black bear followed a stream down to the sea and was wandering around at low tide looking for tasty invertebrates under the rocks. He seemed quite unphased by the gaggle of tourists following along above and taking his picture.

 Out in the water, the Steller Sea Lions are equally impressive mammals. Since we typically see them from boats where we are both far away and much higher up they can seem comical, but they are pretty big and impressive creatures in their own rights. They are infact the largest of the eared seals and combine the size of bears with the sociability of dogs.

 Carrying the bear analogy one step further, the Whale Interpretive Centre has skeleton samples of most of the resident mammals, and a quick comparison between a grizzly bear and a steller sea lion shows more than a passing resemblance. This should not come as a huge surprise since both groups share common Arctoidea ancestors and are really just different twigs on the same branch of the mammalian family tree.

Hungry hungry humpbacks

 We had our annual visit to Telegraph Cove over the Labour Day long weekend and its been a few years since we actually had a blog post dedicated to one of our favorite animal sightings: the humpback whale. There have been an increasing number of humpback whales in the area this year, and Captain Wayne told us that it was a poor year for baitfish such as herring, so the humpbacks were being very competive for their meals. The whale below slapped its tail on the water for several minutes straight, maybe saying hello and maybe telling the other whales to give him some room.

 This was the first year we had seen humpbacks performing a newly discovered feeding technique called 'Trap feeding.' This behaviour seems particular to this area of the world, making it all the more rare and amazing to see. The whale essentially pops its mouth above the water and slowly moves around while using its pectoral fins to push fish into its mouth. An incredible bit of hunting AND a good chance to see the whale for more than a few seconds as they held this position for half a minute or more scooping up fish.

 Of course, with so many whales in the area, some were more competitive than others, as the whale below is lunging sideways through a bait ball. There were 5 or more humpbacks in the immediate area all feeding on this school of fish and the meal lasted several minutes.

Interestingly enough, the whales are just being opportunistic mooches, the actual work is done by the birds, some of which dive under water while others scoop up fish from above, forcing them into a ball for defense... the the humpback "sneaks" in and eats the lot. The birds do the work, but we have yet to see any get accidentally eaten, so they don't have the worst part of the deal, that place is reserved for the fish that EVERYONE seems to find so delicious.

Back to School and Summer Job Roundup

 We had a wonderful getaway to Telegraph Cove over the Labour Day long weekend, but before we get to that I'd like to do a quick post about my summer job and heading back to school for year 2 (of 2). I had a great summer gig at Bardel Entertainment doing Excel spreadsheet data and will continue to do some part-time freelance for them in the coming year, which is nice. It was very fun to transition from the art side to the business side and see film production from an entirely different perspective.

 For my friends still in vfx: if the image below doesn't look like a fun summer then don't get into accounting :) I spent 3 months working in Excel 8 hours a day creating templates for Bardel to track the finances of their various productions and help consolidate that for quarterly reports. I also did some basic entry level accounting tasks and learned an absolute ton.

 And here's the lineup for the coming term. The first week is always a pain getting caught up on reading as every course has a few chapters right off the hop that are full of technical terms but not complex enough to warrant longer coverage so there's a sudden surge to read 100+ pages of dense material in each book. For those of you not familiar with it, and to give scale to the widths of that stack, the Income Tax Act (at the bottom) is 2000+ pages of 8 point legalese text and a guaranteed cure for insomnia.

 

In Summary: It was a good summer, its going to be an intense and demanding 9 months, but after this push I will be totally employable in my new field and already have some contacts and experience for when I come out the other end.