Strawberry Isle ScuttleButt
Summer 2000

Well time rolls by here in Clayoquot Sound. Already the days are getting shorter. After a bit of a chaotic start, our summer works are in full swing. Carla Watson is back on staff for her second year and is again putting in as many volunteer as paid hours.

Grice Bay

What has been going on? Well, over the winter we plotted all the peripheral data from last year's field work and were able to show on an air photo that 56% of the Grice Bay is Ghost shrimp habitat / Grey Whale feeding ground. This year we wanted to establish how much of the bay is Eel Grass. We allowed ourselves ten days to plot the boundaries of the grass beds but found the job to be a lot easier than expected. The deed was done in three days. We worked the lowest tides of the year in early July with Carla and volunteer Jody Weir sitting on the bow of the "Punt" with the GPS unit. They were able to see well enough down into the water to guide me, at the wheel, along the deep edge of the beds while they took a fix about every 30 metres. On these early morning low tides, close to 80% of the bay is a glistening field of gray mud and lush green Eel Grass. Eagles and crows are scattered about picking through the grass for their breakfast while Blue Herons work the water's edge occasionally stabbing their beaks down to pull out an eel or sculpin. Racoons, along the rocky shore, pay us little attention as they go about digging for clams. The only habitants who give us any notice at all are nine Harbour Seals who interrupt their search for perch or flat fish to follow us a while but soon decide that, like all humans, our activity makes no sense at all and is of little interest. "There goes a couple of Mink dashing across the grass flats." "Oh, oh." A young Bald Eagle is swooping down and yes, he scoops one up without missing a wing beat. The hapless Mink's buddy is no hero, his little legs are a blur as he races for the sanctity of the forest.

Our monthly work in Grice Bay shows that after over a years predation by the young Grey Whale 'White Head' and his periodic buddies, the Ghost Shrimp density is down from close to 100 shrimp in nine core samples to a meagre half dozen. Now that this whale has abandoned the bay it will be interesting to see how long it takes for the shrimp density to recover. There is no need to worry about this population being wiped out by the whales because the shrimp's habitat extends far up into waters that are much too shallow for the whales to get at.

Lemmens Inlet

Our Lemmens Inlet water quality work, with Aquametrix, is in its eighth of twelve months. At this point in time we are sampling every four days. We are monitoring eight sites in the inlet. At each site we take a two-litre water sample from a depth of two metres with a Niskin bottle. We record water temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen and the particulate matter in the water column is measured via Secchi disc. The collected water is deposited into one container with a Lugol dye / preservative for plankton identification and another container for quantifying total suspended solids. This part of the job is done at the Aquametrix lab in Sydney. We won't be able to tell you much about the findings until the data is compiled at the end of the study in December. Obvious observations of interest have been that in the summer months, the deeper you go into the inlet, the warmer the water gets (16.3 to date) while in the winter, the opposite is true with water surface temperatures so low that we had to break ice on several occasions up in the head of the inlet. The plankton densities are apparent in that during the spring months we could see the Secchi disc as deep as thirteen metres beneath the surface while now, in the summer, we're lucky if we can see it at four metres. This work is part of a carrying capacity study for oyster farms in Lemmens Inlet.

Killer Whales

" Killer Whales, what Killer Whales?" Over the last couple of months we have only had two visits where we would normally, if you can use that word in the same breath with Kawkawin, expect to have been graced with their company, on average, about nine times. The two visits we did have were uneventful with three unidentified animals seen travelling down the open ocean coast and T069 with her two kids and a couple of unknown whales spent an afternoon in Sidney Inlet. We have, in the past, gone through slow times with these animals that were followed by periods of intense visitation so perhaps we will have some great sightings to share with you in the next Scuttle Butt.

Rehab

In May, we got a call from Wilfred Atleo, "I just pulled a very sick Sea Lion pup out of the water and I'm sending him down with Eddy Sam on the Cynthia Dawn." "OK, we haven't had one of those yet but we'll see what we can do." On arrival, we see this to be a bit of a runt yearling Steller Sea Lion. The animal is so weak that it can barely roll its head and is hypothermic. I carried him up into the house and laid him down under a blanket in an empty plastic kiddie pool. There is no obvious physical injury and weight appears normal. "Hmm, he has gone to sleep so we'll let him rest before taking vitals." I sat myself down on the floor beside him and barely an hour passed when abruptly, up pops his head. An instant later he is standing up and leaps out of the pool. "What?" He's out of the living room and into the mud room. This is a darkish room with a high square window that he seems to think is an exit. Below the window is a one metre high dresser that is only about the size of a magazine on the top. No problem, he leaps up on top of this with ease but when he stands up to reach the window, the whole thing comes crashing down. He lands on a garbage bag full of laundry and immediately identifies it as the enemy. The bag and contents are torn asunder with a vicious vengeance. With some fancy acrobatics I manage to avoid the darting, snarling head and get the outside door open and out he goes. With some guidance via holding floater coats where we don't want him to go, we get him directed along the boardwalk towards the water. Instead of going down the ramp, he leaps two metres down to the rocks, gets the breath knocked out of him but is in the water and gone within seconds. "Whew, talk about a recovery!" The best I can come up with is that something very traumatic happened to this animal that necessitated extreme physical exertion. All he was likely suffering from was acute exhaustion. "Well, that's another new experience to add to the never ending saga at Strawberry Isle."

Another dead Gray Whale

June 12. At close to twelve metres, this is a big animal. He is in a difficult to work position on the rocks at Blunden Island so, thanks to Ahousaht Fisheries (Darrel Campbell) the carcass is towed to a sheltered cove at the North end of Ahous Bay on Vargas Island. Possession was claimed by the Ahousaht Band who gave us full access to do our work.

We found nothing to establish cause of death for this animal but there was strong evidence of internal bleeding. We'll have to wait for the lab report to see if they are able to learn anything from the organ samples we sent in.

This was likely my messiest necropsy. For starters, while standing in the body cavity, I crouched a little too low and filled both my boots with oil, blood and slime then, due to time constraints, we couldn't remove all the ribs so in order to get a heart tissue sample, I had to climb right inside the chest cavity. Not a great place to be, it smells, your up to your knees in blood and there is all kinds of neat stuff dripping down on your head. Oh the romance of the marine research business.

In attendance this day were Rod Palm, Christina Tombach, Heather Patterson, Randy Mercer, Marco Peemoeller, Adrienne David, James Swan, several First Nations folks and an Ahousaht school group. Christina and Heather did a great job of getting the school group participating with hands on work and interpretation.

As an aside on this incident, we also had in close attendance two wolves who were obviously accustomed to associating people with food. I thought about what folly it is to feed wildlife and that it generally leads to the death of the animal. This case proved to be no exception, a couple of weeks later these same animals (photo identified) attacked and severely injured a kayacker in his sleeping bag. Both wolves were captured, both were put down.

Health to all, till fall

Rod Palm