Strawberry Isle Scuttlebutt

Year end report for 1997
by Rod Palm

Where to start? The Kawkawin, where else? In '97 we monitored Killer Whale movements in Clayoquot Sound for 176 hours over a total distance of 481 miles. This was not a typical year. Of the 43 days (down from 50 in '96) that they were known to be in the sound, the whales were here more than usual in the spring and less than usual in the summer. Why was this? I don't know, let's blame it on the El Nino. Twelve different gangs were seen and for the first year we saw no adult whales we had never seen in the past. For new readers, the Killer Whales that we are monitoring are the mammal eating transients but we were also, on three days, visited by the fish eating northern residents who normally plunder the waters of Johnstone Straits.

Three kills were observed in '97. On March 8, Ted's gang got a hapless River Otter who they slapped back and forth through the air for distances of perhaps ten metres before finally eating him. On June 16 we got a report that five Kawkawin (description sounded like the Motley Crew) were putting on a fearsome show of killing something in the Gray Whale feeding grounds of Cow Bay. There was blood and blubber flying everywhere. It was first thought the victim might be a young Gray but when a piece of blubber was delivered to us, it turned out to be a chunk from the anal area of a Harbor Porpoise. The third kill was made by Langara's gang (can't accurately call transient groups pods) along with T069's. There was a great flurry of activity with blood in the water but no prey identification was made, likely a Harbor Seal.

We only saw one new calf in '97. T068 showed up with a fresh young'un in April. This lady, at 37 years of age, has been very productive. She is one of only two females, whom we have seen, with four offspring though John Ford tells us that there are resident Killer Whales who have had six surviving offspring, twins even. T068 had her first calf when she was 14. With a gestation period of about 16 months, she has spent more than five of her 28 years being pregnant. Several years can go by without this gang being seen by anyone anywhere so it was a treat to have them around for seven days in April and May.

Here's a bit of trivia for you, since the study started in 91/01/01 we have recorded 211 Killer Whale visits to the west coast where the direction of travel was established. On 138 occasions the movement was up the coast while only 73 were down the coast. Why are they travelling up almost twice as often as down? Are they taking advantage of the near-shore current that runs up the coast? It would be premature to state this as a fact but it will be interesting to see if this trend continues over the years. Further, 31% of the time, they passed by Clayoquot without actually entering the sound.

All the gangs we saw in '97 were intact. That is to say that no one was missing so we had no deaths or disappearances. We did get a dead Killer Whale near Hot Springs Cove (see Oct. Scuttle Butt) but it was O120 who was a member of the offshore culture of Orcas who are not part of our study.

Speaking of dead whales, are we ever getting a pile of bones over here. We have the skeleton of a Baird's Beaked whale that is likely the only one in Canada except for a badly deteriorate section of a skull in the Provincial Museum. We also have an "offshore" Killer Whale that is the only known specimen anywhere. Our intent has been to get some of these skeletons displayed locally but we have had to come to the realization that this is not likely to happen any time soon. In the meantime, the bones are exposed to the elements and showing signs of decay. Another factor to consider is that, being so rare, both these animals should be safely deposited somewhere where they are more readily accessible to other researchers. The Provincial Museum has the largest collection of Killer Whale skeletons in the world so we have made arrangements to have the bones delivered to them. Most of the bones have been boiled, scrubbed, scraped, soaked and cursed by some very hard working volunteers Theresa Rothenbush, Corey Peet and Sergio Juarez. We hope to have them moved by spring.

Never fear, we are called on to deal with stranded whales every year so there will be lots more bones. I think that the most significant skeleton for us to have on display here on the west coast would be a full-grown Gray Whale. Anyway, nowadays it is not proper to display the actual bones, rather molds of the bones. Even the Gray Whale skeleton at the Provincial Museum's whale display is in fact made up of molds. Sadly, this display is to be dismantled on February first this year.

I would like to insert here that Sergio has gone back to Mexico where he will be continuing his education and connecting with other Gray Whale researchers in Baja. Teresa and Cory are back in University at Victoria and working very hard to come up with funding that will enable them to come back to Strawberry Isle this summer and slave for us full time. These hard working kids will be a great asset to our society. One of the more significant things they will be doing is setting up several elementary to university level education programs.

The El Nino-Southern Oscillation, boy, we're getting a lot of influence from that current in this decade. 'The Little One' has affected our climate every year so far except 1996. In all the eighties, only five years were affected but even this was more than historic records. The most visible indicators that we have seen on the marine front are mackerel and pelicans.

The Chub Mackerels have been the scourge of fisherman who reel them in one after another in their quest for salmon. Unfortunately, aside from being a nuisance, most often they have young salmon in their stomachs. Yet another factor on the long list of threats to the poor old salmon stocks.

Brown Pelicans were seen in small numbers on a consistent basis for a week or so, on and around Cleland Island. We received big numbers from Brian on the West Coast Trail. Carmanah Point has as many as 97 of them decorating the rocks for 16 days. A plus here is that they may predate the mackerel.

On to Gary Whales. There are still a few hanging around. Doug Leys reports sightings in Cow Bay and around Fitzpatrick Island and there's been one loitering about at Ahousat for the last couple of weeks. It's exciting to imagine that as many as 25 thousand Grays are now leaving the breeding / calving lagoons on the coast of Baja. We should start seeing the first wave of males pass by in a few weeks. The new born calves are growing, getting stronger and perfecting their swimming technique on the road so we won't be seeing them with their moms for a couple of months yet.

We have always had good coverage of the Gray Whales in the feeding grounds of Clayoquot Sound from the local whale watching fleet. In '97, our scope of study was extended to include the West Coast Trail section of the coast. This was made possible by one Brian Gisborne who runs a water taxi service a couple of times a day between Bamfield and Port Renfrew. Brian is a member of our society who asked if there was any information that he could record for us. Shure enough. We gave him a list. We almost forgot about this until last month when Brian showed up at the island with a very detailed log book that covered 193 runs from April 27 to October 7. Wow, it was a big job entering all the data but we ended up with a very detailed look at the Gray Whale's use of this unit of the Pacific Rim National Park. By far the most heavily used section of coast line was from Pachena Point to Clo-oose. Without going into a lot of boring figures, suffice to say that this section of coast line representing 43% of the trail, enjoyed 75% of the Gray Whale presence. One of the feeding sites along the trail is the infamous Nitinat Bar where the whales bottom feed in barely enough water to float them. Wild breaking seas lash their extended tails back and forth through the air in bizarre gyrations that Brian calls "The Nitinat Dance."

On the subject of Gray Whales, we have just finished another year's sampling in the Grice Bay feeding ground. One of the enlightening things we saw was a huge drop in Ghost Shrimp numbers (50%) from March to May yet the volume actually increased 147%. This was accomplished by an increase of 10mm in the shrimp's average length. The size of these shrimp in the bay is quite small. The largest one we have measured since we started the monitoring in July of '95 was 69mm with average length generally being in the twenties. It was interesting to go through this month's collection. There were only 18 shrimp (Dec. was 61) with an average length of only 23mm. (down 6mm from Dec.) This may only be an anomaly so I will be anxious to see what we find in February.

We managed to get through the year with only once getting stuck on the mud flats. Of course it had to happen with a volunteer on board. I'm not shure if he understood my curling up in the bilge of our boat and going to sleep for three hours till the tide came in. There really was nothing else to do.

Something that Jim Darling suggested we look at in '97 was, "Why is Grice Bay so special to the Gray Whales?" We have, to date, surveyed about half the mudflats in Clayoquot Sound and so far have found only scattered pockets of Ghost Shrimp, not near enough to satisfy the voracious appetites of these living excavators. It is becoming evident that it takes a very precise substrate mixture of sand and mud to satisfy the demands of these shrimp. To describe this mix, "If you're walking on a mudflat and sink to your ankles, there won't be any shrimp but if you sink to your knees there's bound to be lots."

As a fringe benefit to this study we are learning a lot about the molluscs that live in different parts of the sound. We see Moon Snails, Cockles, Horse, Butter and Little Neck Clams, in all the flats while Cleft, Jack Knife and anulata Clams are found in areas like Felice Island that are closer to the open ocean. Deeper into the inlets we find False Mya, Mud and Bent Nose Clams. At Dead Man Island we found a fan mussel, the first I had ever seen.

I had a small plane circle me a couple of times one morning while slugging over the flats in front of Meares Creek. I puzzled over what could be so interesting about a guy walking the mud flats, maybe the snow shoes had something to do with it.

On to the Sea Lions. The purpose of this monitoring was to verify that the Sea Lion Rocks off Long Beach is a haulout that is of shared use by Steller Sea Lions Eumetopias jubatus and California Sea Lions Zalophus californianus. This has been common knowledge amongst the tour boat drivers out of Tofino but the Rocks are recorded as a year-round, Steller only, haulout. We did the counts between the tenth and twentieth of each month from January to December of 1997.

The monitoring showed that, aside from occasional single occupancy, the only time there were significant numbers of Californias was on the May count when there were forty-five individuals on Brant Rock. This suggests that they use the Sea Lion Rocks as a resting haulout during their migration to the southern breeding / birthing grounds of Mexico and California.

We are still doing an old photo search in an attempt to establish when the Californias started using the rocks. We're quite shure, from old records, that they weren't using them before 1972. To date we have only found one photograph taken by Kechura Palm at the rocks in May of '96 that clearly shows three Californias amid the Stellers. Here's where you may be able to help. If you have any photos of the Sea Lion Rocks that were taken between 1972 and 1996 we would really like to see them.

These counts also showed that the rocks are not heavily used during the stormy winter months. During some storm conditions, particularly at high tide the huge swells were breaking over even the highest rock and avalanching down the lee side with such power that even the largest bull would be unable to hold his position.

We hope to raise the funding to carry on these counts. Logistically, it is a good site to watch over several years to verify the seasonal counts made during this study or to find any yearly trends.

Here's a bit of business stuff. Sandra Thomson came up from Nanaimo and gave us another productive workshop in December. Aside from a bang up job on the research, we did a good job of accomplishing the actual workings of the society in '97. The Orca lodge's benefit dinner pulled in more than three thousand dollars, Wildside Books with design help from Write On Office Supplies designed and printed our new brochures, Clayoquot Information Services got our home page (www.island.net/~sisle/rshindex.htm) up and running, we did eight presentations and a half dozen TV and newspaper interviews, daily live broadcasts were done thru the Vancouver Aquarium during Whale Fest, established a portfolio of letters of credibility from scientists and we published an updated field guide to transient Killer Whales in Clayoquot Sound. Oh ya, yours truly was profiled in the Vancouver Aquarium annual newsletter, The Blackfish Sounder.

We have some great news for '98, it looks like everything is falling into place for resurrecting our pelagic transects (monthly monitoring of birds and marine mammals over the continental shelf). Jamie's Whaling Station has donated the "Hot Springs Eagle" as a vessel for us to use and we have a couple of promising sources to cover the fuel costs, no small thing at close to $300 per run. Veteran Scuttle Butt readers will recall our reporting on such exotics as South Polar Skuas, Laysan Albatross, Baird's Beaked Whales and Northern Right Whale Dolphins.

Sea ya next month