Scuttlebutt February ‘97 report
by Rod Palm

Wow. Things are getting very hectic for our society. Here’s a break down.

You may remember in our Feb. ‘96 report that I was privileged to see, for the first time in all my years on the water, three deep diving, squid eating, Baird’s Beaked Whales (North Pacific Bottle Nosed Whales). Well on Feb. 19, Bill Pettinger reported a whale in the surf at Cox Bay. Arriving on the scene, we were speechless to see that it was a Baird’s. What to do? Call Graeme Ellis at the Nanaimo Biological Station, then Dave Nagorson at the Provincial Museum and finally Gary Stonely (the bone guy). This is a very significant find, the only other skeleton that Gary knows of is in Alaska. We need to preserve this skeleton and it wants to be displayed here on the west coast. With these formalities out of the way Kechura, volunteer Doug Lays and I are back on the beach. Pacific Sands resort is not too crazy about the whales accompanying aroma that is gently wafting into their cabins, "Get it outta here!" The village works crew and their equipment met us on the site as the tide dropped. Within an hour we have the 9.5 metre cut in four pieces, that are then picked up with a back hoe and loaded into a truck that takes the carcass to the fourth street boat ramp. Neil Botting of G & N Towing volunteered to tow the whale to Strawberry Isle for flensing. In four days, a work crew has all the bones separated from the rotting cadaver. I was amazed that folks would not only volunteer for such a disgusting job but seemed to do it with gusto, special thanks to Pepot, Pete and Steve. Our instructions from the ‘bone guy’ are to get the bones into the ocean for the critters to clean up. At this writing there is a macabre whale sized mobile thrashing in the tide under Strawberry Isle’s mooring float.

While stretching her legs on Chesterman’s Beach, Camilla Thorogood found a rib that was one of the several missing from our whale. We humbly request that anyone who may find any large bones in the area, please call us (725-3958). We will trade you a Gray Whale bone.

Killer Whale sightings over the last few months have been particularly frequent for this time of year.

We had been wondering how the new baby was going to affect our field work. Well on December 13, I had my Shark Salvage hat on while working on a wharf that I couldn’t leave, when a call came from McCaw fish farm. Kawkawin are milling around up the inlet. Kechura didn’t think twice about sticking three month old Naeco in a snuggle then throwing on an oversize cruiser suit and heading up the inlet. She not only found the whales but got the ID photos necessary to identify them as T049's gang. This is the largest transient gang, six whales, and the bull T051 was also with them. These guys are regular visitors to our area.

On the seventh of February we were surprised to see the northern resident fish eaters, "G" subpods. They were first called in from Ahousat as they passed the village heading towards the open sea. It took us close to an hour to get in the area but Willie’s sharp eye spotted them cutting across towards Blunden Island. The interesting thing about this encounter was the fact that they headed straight offshore for several miles then turned and headed down the coast yet further away from their normal stomping ground. Seeming to disappear from their home territory in the winter months made this a fairly significant sighting.

February was a very frustrating month in that crew boats, water taxis and native fisheries patrol boats reported eight days of Killer Whale sightings in Sidney Inlet and we either heard about it too late or weather didn’t allow us to go look for them. These visits were undoubtedly related to the herring spawn taking place in the inlet at that time. It’s not likely that the Kawkawin were after the herring themselves, but rather the seals and sea lions that are among the furred, feathered and scaled critters who are attracted to the ensuing feast of these silvery fishes and their spawn. Perhaps next year at this time, we will be in a position that we could camp out in the area to record exactly what is going on.

The mystery of the branded Sea Lions that we reported last year has been solved, with the help of Peter Olesiuk of the Nanaimo Biological Station.

The California’s with three digit numbers (236 and 106) were captured in ‘95 at the Ballad Locks near Seattle. You may have heard that these animals were taking a very heavy toll on the salmon heading up through the locks to spawn. The Shilshole Research Institute are branding the animals as part of a study to determine if there is some way to deal with the problem, short of killing them all off.

The branded Steller’s are part of another study being carried out by the Rogue Reef people. These brands are a letter followed by a number (Y2). The animals were branded as pups, Y2 got his graffiti in 1988. Aside from the brands, these pinipeds may be festooned with all sorts of decoration such as nostril or flipper tags, coloured patches glued to the fur on their backs, transmitters glued to their heads and they may even be carrying backpacks full of all kinds sensory equipment. Listen to this, Russel Andrews at the University of British Columbia wanted to investigate female Steller’s foraging away from the rocks where their pups were hauled out. These study animals carry a transmitter that links into a polar satelite to record their position along with gauges that record frequency and depths of their dives, swimming speeds and water temperature. What really caught my attention was a encapsulated thermometer that was inserted into the anesthetized animals stomach to measure the drop in stomach temperature whenever a fish was ingested, on top of this the degree of temperature drop is likely relative to the size of fish caught. All this info is transmitted, via VHF telemetry link, right back to Russ’ base. Wow, whatever happened to the grad students freezing their buns off in a beat up old Zodiac.

Anyone spotting any of these marked animals please give us a call (725-3958). The brands are about 10 cm. high when placed, but grow with the animal. For instance Y2's brand is now about 23 cm. high.

On the benthic front, after a couple of years of sediment sampling, we have finally arrived at what is likely to be the standard for the rest of the study. We started off doing our sampling in Grice Bay, a Gray Whale feeding ground, with a suction device called an air lift. The problem with this unit was that we didn’t feel confident with the accuracy of the sample size and we were very tide level dependent in that we needed at least three metres of water for the tool to work. Next we dug out an old Razor Clam gun that I had put together about 25 years ago. The gun is basically a tube that is capped off at one end and has a vent hole. The way it works is as you push the tube into the mud and the air/water escapes out the vent hole. When you extract it, you stop off the vent with your thumb so that the suction holds the sample in the tube. This unit worked fine and could be used even at low tide but the sample size was too small. Well now, thanks to the Parks Service, we have a larger gun, made out of stainless steel no less. We used the new mud gun for the first time in the February sampling. Nine cores produced sixty nine Ghost Shrimp along with the regular mixed bag of clams, tiny crabs and worms. We will keep you informed of any critter size or populations patterns that start to show up as the study progresses.

Got a nice note from Theresa Burg thanking us for all the kidney samples we sent her. Theresa is doing her masters on population and substructure of the Harbour Seals of British Columbia. The samples are used for DNA fingerprinting and likely will be analysed for toxicity levels.

This year we are again helping a grad student with tissue samples for DNA work. This time the subject is the 15 cm squid Loligo opalescens. Denise Reichow at Simon Fraser University is looking into their genetic population structure. Fisherman Shane Sadler has volunteered to supply the squid whereafter we will remove the appropriate tissue, in this case from the gills, and ship it in a neutral chemical to Denise. One of the many perks we are finding are the many interesting people we come in contact with in the course of doing our own studies.

In last weeks Westerly News, Colleen Wilson of the Orca Lodge posted a thank you to all the people who attended, donated and gave art to our wonderfully successful fundraising dinner. I would like to reiterate that thanks and emphasize our appreciation to Colleen and all the staff at the Orca Lodge. We know they put an awful lot of time into setting the whole thing up. We now have our new camera in hand, along with enough in the bank to get the year kicked into gear. Again, our thanks to all.