From the Archipelago: Hints of Abundance

April-May 2005

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by Alexandra Morton

Alex has won the 2005 Haig-Brown Conservation Award.

This has been the most beautiful, sunniest, calmest winter since I moved to Echo Bay in 1984. Each day dawns cold and clear. While the inlets have suffered freezing winds and spray, Echo Bay is nestled between Kingcome and Knight Inlets and so is the calm between the outflows. This, no doubt, is why there is such a large First Nation midden in Echo Bay—it was a good place to winter. The goldeneyes and common mergansers winter here.

While the Broughton is under assault, over-burdened, the heart of this ecosystem still beats strong and shows every sign that, given half a chance, it could revive to full and spectacular capacity. As I ride along the waterways, I read the signs.

Throughout Fife Sound and Cramer Pass, murres dot the dark water in their white and gray plumage. Murres are not dedicated residents of the Broughton. Their large flocks are more often seen out in the more open waters of Blackfish Sound and Queen Charlotte Strait where their raspy cries and deep calls of ‘murgg murgg murgg’ keep their society together. But this winter there were flocks of five to ten of these expert fishermen visible daily. This hints at an abundance of small schooling fish below.

Sprinkled amongst the murres, tiny murrelets bob lightly, their beaks tipped upward. Known locally by some as ‘kiss me arse’, these birds were used by fishermen to find Chinook salmon. Chinook and murrelets eat the same size fish and so these birds marked the best fishing spots. Even though the Chinooks are all but gone, more than 50 murrelets have wintered in Cramer Pass, and I know there must be many small fish around to attract and sustain such a gathering.

The harbor porpoise have also been abundant in Cramer Pass. Harbor porpoise generally occur in groups of two to three, but I have counted ten in the group in Cramer Pass. There were so many, they attracted the next rung in the food chain. Two orca, mother and son, cruised through and ate a porpoise in February. The other porpoise never left. They scattered quietly during the kill, but did not go far. The orca did not exploit this little population, but were content to take one and leave. The local eagle pair partook in the feast until all that was left was a slick and the scent.

The eagles that own my place have become bird specialists over the past several years. Now I witness aerial battles every week all winter. The prey are various species of ducks and often small sea gulls. The ducks’ strategy is to dive at the last second of the eagle’s dive but the gulls must try to out-maneuver the eagles. Both eagles will team up to try and land the fatal strike, but the gulls usually team up as well. While I suspect the eagles are a mated pair, I don’t know what relationship the gulls have. In an aerial skirmish with an eagle, the gull under attack is kept below the eagle, the second gull however, rises above the eagle and harasses it, trying to distract it enough to let the first gull gain altitude. These eagles are bold and think nothing of striking a gull and falling with it into the ocean, then swimming to shore with it struggling in their talons.

I suspect the reason for the increase in eagle predation on other birds is due to the decline in over-wintering Chinook salmon. Just as the Inuit have many words for snow, the fishermen of BC have many names for their prized Chinook salmon. Often they are called spring salmon and a spring salmon caught in wintertime is a winter spring. These winter springs have all but vanished and hence eagles are trying to adapt.

The sea lions from Duff Island leave their winter sleeping grounds in ones and twos and are cruising the shorelines of the Broughton. A few minutes drifting along almost any shoreline is enough to see one. Their loud, wet breaths draw attention to their sleek brown heads as they lie at the surface restocking oxygen to their blood. Then they dive and are usually out of earshot around another bend before their next breath. These large fish-eaters signal an abundance of small fish.

Identifying a breath of a sea mammal at night can be tricky, but the little porpoise is a puff, while the dolphin is a staccato puff precisely clipped at beginning and end. The sea lion is a wet noisy breath, the orca is loud enough to echo and the humpback is much longer and drawn out than the orca, with the bigger whales having the more baritone breaths.

A clue to what fish are here can be seen at dusk. Where the light is right, a sheen of tiny bubbles rise from tiny herring airbladders as these fish come to the surface to feed under cloak of darkness. At night their sounds begin at the edge of my perception, then crescendo into a roar of delicate swishing noise as schools pass my hydrophones. Every night dolphins feed on them with intense buzzing of echolocation. The dolphins often vanish into open water during the day and I would not even know they are here without the hydrophone. But dolphins mean fish and so I know there are lots of small fish about.

Identifying fish is one of my greatest challenges. They can be dimpling the surface all around the boat sounding like rain and yet just out of sight. Like most things, it takes time and patience, and so I float, bent motionless over the gunwhales. You can often smell fish, if there is something there such as birds feeding on them. Capelin smell like fresh cut cucumbers. If there are scales in the water, chances are they’re from herring. Anchovies flash their gill-plates, pilchard graze the surface. In mid-winter, you know it‘s not salmon fry. A clue to the feast outside my windows came from neighbor Billy Proctor trying to jig up some fish for fish and chips. “I snagged a herring and a capelin on one hook,” he came by to tell me. That spoke of quite a high density of fish, and the assemblage of birds and porpoise became clearer. Yet, with all abundance, salmon are still declining in the Broughton Archipelago.

On the human side, signs of spring are here. Every morning, boats cluster at the dock at the head of Echo Bay. The school is still open, giving children tremendous opportunity as the teacher/child ratio is nearly unparalleled in BC. One family has moved back to restart the Buffer Zone Wilderness Resort, and Echo Bay Resort is now catering to kayakers, as is Cracroft Ocean Adventures in nearby Potts Lagoon. And many of the fishing lodges have kayaks appearing on their docks. Kayakers are the greatest source of income for the water taxis. This is not surprising as the Broughton is kind to kayakers with her cradling shorelines and inviting beaches.

I often confuse kayakers at first for orca. When you raise your paddles, the wet glint is not unlike a whale’s fin. It’s the rhythm that gives you away. While an orca is up… pause… sink, you are a twinkle… twinkle… twinkle as each blade leaves the water.

Alex’s recent book is great a collection of her writings and photographs. If you buy online at http://georgiastrait.org a portion of each sale will be donated to the Georgia Strait Alliance.

Until the Broughton recovers from salmon farming and the ensuing bleak local economy, you are one of the Broughton’s best hopes. You are an infusion of energy not unlike the returning salmon. You demand little of your host waters, like the miraculous pink salmon. You cannot pack kilos of fish away, you do not have insatiable shareholders. And you have a voice. If you love wilderness on this coast, speak now. The coming provincial election is a moment of opportunity. If you want to paddle among the whales, eagles and bears, the sea lice issue must come to resolution. The solution is simple. We cannot place huge industrial farms in wild salmon nurseries, because nature never intended salmon to be stationary, so close to the rivers. They wreak havoc, giving the local pathogens unprecedented opportunity to explode, not unlike cancer. Fortunately, salmon farms are only anchored and can be moved. And that’s the first thing that needs to happen—move the farms out of the sensitive juvenile wild salmon habitat, into the kind of habitat they require, and then meet their bio-security needs with closed containment. Speak up now and soon we will be reading the signs of salmon returning. The wild DNA still exists, but not for long if these steps aren’t taken.

See you out here.

 

© Alexandra Morton, R.P.Bio., is a marine mammal researcher and author. www.raincoastresearch.org.