Hol Chan

 Hol Chan, Mayan for “little channel,” covers 19km2 of coral reefs, seagrass beds, and mangrove forest near San Pedro. Established during the 1990s during a time of increasing tourism and declining fishing industry, the area covers 4 zones which have differing biomes and permitted activities.

Generations of fisherman cleaning their gear while returning to port has created an unexpected gathering place of sharks and stingrays, known locally as Shark Ray Alley, where local tour guides feed the animals as tourists watch from nearby.

Hol Chan Cut is open to the sea beyond the reef, enabling marine creatures to travel between the interior and exterior of the reef. This concentrates wildlife with 160 species of fish, 40 types of coral, and 3 species of sea turtle in addition to numerous rays, lobsters, eels, and anenomes.

Mexico Rock

The Belize Barrier Reef is a 300km section of the 900km long Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second largest coral reef system in the world, which Charles Darwin described as “the most remarkable reef in the West Indies” in 1842. With only 10% of the reef properly researched, it is already a recorded home to 100 species of coral and 500 species of fish and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996.

Mexico Rocks is a shallow complex of some 100 clustered patch reefs along a limestone ridge. Popular with both snorkelers and SCUBA divers it was recommended for preservation in 1978 and officially recognized in 2015.

Belize was the first country in the world to completely ban bottom trawling in 2010 and in 2015 banned offshore drilling within 1k of the reef. Despite these measures it suffers the same risks as all reefs and an estimated 40% has already been damaged by human impact.

In addition to environmental damage, much of the reef is also suffering from invasive Lionfish. With a voracious appetite, venomous spines, and no natural predators, these fish are taking a significant toll on local species. Fortunately the people of Belize are actively taking steps to curtail their numbers with bounties for local fisherman and eager offers to take tourists spear fishing with civeche for dinner.

Swarms of Dolphins

One last blog post for 2016 as Kathryn and I head off on our first big adventure in far too long.
This summer we made our annual visit to Telegraph Cove and had a delightful encounter with a HUGE pod of pacific white-sided dolphins. Long-time readers may recall (with some prompting) that we have had pretty amazing sightings of these animals in the past, but this time put all others to shame.

 There were an estimated 500 or so individuals (common rule of thumb is there are 4-5 animals underwater for every one you can see at the surface at a given time) and they were VERY interested in our boat and playing in our wake. Large groups of them were playing at the front and back and a few Dahl's porpoises even joined in the fun to race past them and shame everyone with their speed.

 Not only were they following along and playing, but they were constantly leaping out of the water so close to our boat that I actually had to switch cameras because my telephoto lens was too tight to capture the whole animal. They followed along with us for a good 10-15 minutes before flocking off to their next point of interest.

Big thanks again to our dear friend Roger for taking us out and sharing the incredible beauty of his part of the island with us. If you're ever in the Telegraph Cove area, we strongly recommend an outing with his company Stubb's Island Whale Watching.

Happy New Year and we'll have lots of new photos and stories to share in 2017!

Traditional and Unexpected Glowing Objects in the Neighbourhood

 It's the festive time of year full of holiday cheer, final exams, and bright lights. The first two items have been consuming more than their share of my spare time lately, so we're a little late bringing you this update on the third item. The west end of Vancouver gets some pretty nice lights, as we have mentioned in the past, and this year was no exception.

 The middle of December had a festival called "Lumiere" which featured some nice light sculptures, the highlight of which is the life-size orca sculpture by a Slovakian artist which is covered in tiny LED lights and turned on nightly. It's a very pleasing addition to the area and we're both hoping it becomes a permanent installation.

 But winning the prize hands down for "Most Unexpected Glowing Object in the Neighborhood" was A-Borgg who decided to do a photo shoot in the park near our home on the same night as my work Christmas party. Yep, that is a 9-foot tall robot covered in LED lights. He is available for all your rave party/wedding needs, and apparently has a giant gun that shoots CO2 over the crowd... because of course he does. I love our neighborhood...

Checking in on Chester

 I had intended for this to be a follow-up, but we never previously covered Kathryn's work with the false killer whale calf "Chester" who was taken in by the Marine Mammal Rescue last summer (2014). Kathyrn spent many shifts monitoring and tending to him when he was first brought in but in time he outgrew the tanks available and was moved to Vancouver Aquarium.

 

Chester is currently sharing the dolphin tank with Helen, the last of their wounded Pacific White Sided dolphins, and is much larger than he was when Kathryn was looking after him. While we know that cetaceans in captivity is a touchy subject these days, we were saddened to hear interpreters at the aquarium explaining his drooping fin as a natural part of their design when it has a 0% incidence in the wild, and has been proven to be a direct result of tanks that are not large or deep enough to allow the animals room to properly dive and exercise.

 That aside, he is a very curious and inquisitive animal, and came over to visit us at one of the windows for a few minutes. He was very enrapt by the pair of us, and while we both very much want to believe it was because he remembered Kathryn and her efforts, it could just as easily have been light reflecting out of my camera lens that caught his eye as something new.

Unexpected but Fortunate Visitor

 Kathryn has been ridiculously busy with her whale watching work the last few months, but had a stroke of strangely fortunate luck when her boats were cancelled one day recently due to high winds in the Strait of Georgia. We set the alarm forward from her earlier start time to my regular start time and went back to bed. Our alarm plays a local radio station for about 30 seconds each day and on that particular day, the DJs were talking about a whale at Third Beach (maybe 2km from our home) Kathryn was ready and out the door in under 5 minutes.

 A grey whale had made an unexpected appearance right near Stanley Park and was visible for several hours reasonably close to shore before heading out to deeper waters. As bottom feeders that dredge for clams and the like they show up in the city once every few years but we've never had good luck seeing them locally and actually went to California earlier this year to try and spot a few. Kathryn has been on the water with Wild Whales several days a week for the last 3 summers and never seen one in our waters.

 She got some nice close pictures too, and I wanted to share the one below just to show a little more of the mottled detail on the tops of these beasties heads. Grey whales are frequently covered in barnacles and whale lice, and I think the picture below shows a bit of that texture which is quite different from humpbacks.

All in all, an encouraging sight to see such a magestic giant returning to our waters despite hunting in the last century and the generally busy and polluted state of our waters today.

California Marine Mammal Assortment

 We saw quite a few different marine mammals in California and want to share a few highlights in a single post. Starting off, Grey Whales were making their annual migration from Mexico to the Arctic and all along the coastal highway we could see the puffs of their breath as small groups passed us by. Kathryn was quite delighted to look for them for hours and while they were hard to photograph or see very closesly, it was enthralling to look out for their plumes of exhalation. This was a new species for us both and an exciting opportunity.

 We have seen Sea Otters in the Aquarium numerous times, but both hoped to maybe catch a glimpse of one in the distance. They are very rare in B.C. so we assumed they would be rare elsewhere, but in California they seem to be doing just fine. We saw groups of them at least half a dozen times, including this heap of mothers with sleeping babies on their tummies all rafted in kelp near Monterey.

California Sea Lions were certainly the easiest of all our marine mammals to spot as they congregate in large numbers on piers and beaches across the state. They also grunt at each other 24/7 so they are pretty easy to locate but still very charming to see them lounge around on land or dash about in the water.

Elephant Seals of San Simeon

Another major highlight of our California holiday was our timing to see Elephant Seals in large numbers on a beach near San Simeon. As long-time readers may well remember, we have seen elephant seals a few times in recent years, but only females. It has certainly been special to see the females, but when the males are 2.5 times as big (up to 5,100lbs) and have giant weird noses, they are certainly a sight worth seeking out. While the southern elephant seal is apparently even larger, elephant seals in general are the largest seals so they are as big and crazy as a pinniped can get!

The pupping and breeding season was in February, so we missed most of the action, but these things are pretty incredible just to see having a nap. The older a male gets, the more enormous his nose and they have an intense rivalry for females which trims down their lifespan quite a bit. Females often live for 22 years while a male will hit full maturity by 8 and typically die well before age 14.

 The whole focus of the males and females meeting up on these beaches of course is to produce pups, and as the trio below can attest, they are pretty darn cute. These little guys have a pretty extreme childhood as well; their mothers feed them 50% fat milk for 4-5 weeks and then abandon them. Figuring out life as they go, they typically stay near the beaches where they were born for another 12 weeks and then head out to sea until next year.

Whales of 2014

Over the holidays, Geordie taught me how to edit video in Premiere. So I took all my 2014 whale and wildlife footage that I took while working and made a highlight video.  2013's highlight video is here. Geordie did the steadying and fancy stuff as that was beyond me but I am pretty pleased at the result. 

It was really hard knowing what to put in, what to take out and accepting that what looked fantastic was sometimes too shakey to actually look any good. I shot over 10 gigs of video this season alone so this is only a snapshot. It may change the way I video wildlife now that I am thinking more in terms of what it will be like on 'the big screen'.  I'll probably try to shoot more steady stuff. We shall see...

The footage was shot between April and October of 2014.  It features an amazing encounter with a humpback and her calf, bouncy Southern Resident Orca, active Bigg's Orca and the lovely seals, birds and sea lions that also make their home in the Southern Gulf Islands and the San Juan Islands.  I am hoping that I get better at wildlife videography every year.

Marine Mammal Symposium

 The University of British Columbia has been conducting an annual Marine Mammals Symposium for the past 22 years and this was the 2nd year that we attended. Its a pretty excellent gathering of the west coast minds for all things cetacean and pinniped, with presentations by grad students, professors, artists, and photographers along with representation from the whale watching industry.

 Each presenter is limited to a 5 minute slot which most people stick to out of 'fear' of the Call of the Rooster, which is a rubber chicken squawk signaling that your time is up. This creates a very intense but rapid volley of presentations with 44 different topics this year. There are several breaks throughout the day for lunch and stretches, and the lobby of the building has some pretty awesome articulated skeletons like the minke whale below.

 This trio of dolphin skeletons graces a nearby stairway, and one of the highlights for me this year was a brief presentation by the fellow who not only articulated all the skeletons in the building, but also the blue whale skeleton at the Beatty Biodiversity Museum, as well as some of the larger specimens at the Whale Interpretive Centre.

 

All in all an amazing but mentally draining day learning about some amazing animals from some pretty incredible people. If this sounds like your sort of thing, I would strongly recommend it, even as an outsider to the industry and a bit of a layman myself I find the whole day stimulating and eventful.

Northern Residents of Telegraph Cove

There are several distinct populations of orca in the waters of British Columbia, and the pods most common to the Telegraph Cove area belong to the Northern Residents. These orcas are specialized in eating chinook salmon, nearly to the exclusion of all other potential foods and are an iconic part of the landscape of northern Vancouver Island.

 They travel in pods between a pair to several dozen and like all orca, have a matriarchal society in which the sons stay with their mothers most of their life (according to a book we read last year, sons may spend up to 65% of their life within a body length of their mother). Since they must constantly come up for air, they can only let half of their brain sleep at atime, so they are commonly found in a resting formation where they travel along slowly and breathe frequently.

 When fully awake and active, their behaviour can be quite varied and exciting with all manner of spy hops (below), tail slaps, pectoral fin waves, breaches and vocalization. People only began seriously studying these animals in the 50s and the volume of information yet to be learned is huge, but with such striking and charismatic behaviour there should be no shortage of excited researchers and observers.

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.

Killer Whale Highlights of 2013.

Over the winter Geordie put together a lovely highlight reel from the footage I took over April through to October of my days on the water.  Working at Wild Whales Vancouver I got lots of opportunity to show off these animals and take their pictures.  Not only killer whales (both Bigg's and Southern Residents) but also humpback and minkes whales, harbour seals, steller and california sea lions. I need to work on my bald eagle footage.  Geordie really liked the jumps that I was lucky enough to get, especially as I don't see that kind of activity every day.  They are a bit statisticaly overrepresented in the video.

I hope to take lots more footage of orcas and all the animals out there.  I already have started on a collection for 2014 showcase.

Capilano Salmon Hatchery

I'm a cheap date. Pack a lunch and bus me to North Vancouver's Capilano Salmon Hatchery. I'd never seen salmon migrating before and it was high time I did.  We went when the Chinook's were heading to their salmon grounds on a spectacular fall day.  Below is the dam and the fish ladder is the opening on the lower right.

These here are the tanks where the small babies are held.  They raise several types here including chinooks, coho and steelheads.  The survival rate is very good. The small fry are a different colour from the adults. I like the coho fry the best with their curiosity and stripes.

I knew due to David Attenborough and National Geographic that the trip back to the adult's original spawning grounds is long and hard.  But I never realized how hard until I saw it for myself.  The fish below is very battered. There are scales missing and the white flesh looks necrotic.  Maybe this one will make it. Hopefully she/he does not have far to go.  Geordie and I headed down stream to watch them in a more natural setting and I dunked my camera int he water and the perfect moment to get this intrepid traveler.

Many a Jumping Orca

Breaching whales are always a spectacular sight.  They may do it for communication, socialization or just playing around.  Orcas, dolphins and humpbacks as well as other dolphin and cetacean species can project themselves right out of the water.  A fully grown orca can get the power to do this with about 4 tail waves.

The orca below has done such a big spy hop that it is practically a breach.  Spyhopping is used to help them see around the surface of the water.  They could be orienting themselves using the land or checking out what is around them including observer boats and the shoreline.

Sideways breachs occur when the animal propels itself out of the water at an angle to land on its side.  The orca below looks like she is stretching her paddle shapped pectoral fins up towards the sky.  I think we all wish we could move in the water like them.

Hundreds of Dolphins!

Geordie and I got to scratch one off our bucket list the week of July 10th.  We went on our annual pilgrimage to Telegraph Cove to see friends, beautiful scenery and gorgeous wildlife.  Out with Stubbs Island Whale Watching there came a report of a super pod of Pacific White Sided Dolphins, so we set out to find them.  To count them try to estimate how many you see out of the water at once and them multiply it by 3-5.  There were over 200 in this super pod which is rare for this time of year as it is kind of early.  The photos do not do them justice.  Video is forthcoming.

They were very active. They went all around the boat. Mating, half breaching, tail slapping, jumping and as the fellow below is doing: popcorning.  Just like popcorn popping he shot straight into the air near vertical to land on his right side. He did this repeatedly in about the same spot.

 

In addition to the above activities they were also bow riding.  Pacific white sided dolphins often engage in play with boats and boat wakes.  The wake of the boat gives them surf to play in.  The wake at the side and the push wave at the front gives them a speed boost which must be extra exhilarating. Putting the hydrophone down got us some extra great vocalizations as well.

Low Tide Shellfish Macro

I got a very nice macro lens this spring as a post-overtime reward and have been very happy with it. For those of you that follow such things, its a 60mm equivalent that can do 1:1 macro and has a focusing distance about an inch from the end of the glass. Low tide offers some pretty great macro opportunities and a few are below. Starting off with an oyster which most of you can imagine the scale of from experience.

Below is a snail on that oyster. You can see the one in the picture above as the little black dot near the top of the lip of the oyster. The biggest trick with pictures at this magnification is the focal depth is incredibly shallow and its very easy to have your intended object out of focus with the tiniest movement. Case in point only part of the snail below is actually in focus.

Here we have some barnacles feeding underwater. Their shells are maybe the size of a pea, which should give an idea what this new lens is capable of. For those of you bored by camera tech I do have a few barnacle fun-facts: they begin their lives as little swimming larvae which eventually glue their heads to a suitable surface and then spend the rest of their lives catching food with their feet. Throw in being hermaphrodites with the largest genitals-to-body size ratio of any animal in the world, and maybe you don't really want to be looking at them much closer than this ;)

I Guess Wee Otter

Bad title pun aside it is high time I talked about sea otters. Particularly the wee otter Katmai. Geordie and myself have never seen sea otters in the wild despite days of searching and missing them by a matter of hours. So we have to content ourselves with the guys at the aquarium.  A new addition is the mentioned wee otter pup nammed Katmai. 

We saw Katmai the day she was introduced into her new watery enclosure. Below she is exploring the edges and nosing about wondering about her new home.  She doesn't have that whitish head yet.  She won't get that until she is older.  They also have the densest fur of all the animals. It is so dense (nearly one million per sq in) that their actual skin never gets wet.

Katmai is an enclosure with an older female named Tanu.  Tanu has taken Katmai under her paw so to speak.  Both were orphaned and as they cannot be rehabilitated they continue to charm their visitors at the Vancouver Aquarium.  The 'awww' factor is quite high.