I’m in Tofino this week – one of my favourite places in the world – and went on a day-long boat trip out of nearby Ucluelet to the Broken Group Islands with Archipelago Wildlife Cruises.
The Broken Group is a group of small islands and islets in the middle of Barkley Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, BC. The group is protected as the Broken Islands Group Unit of the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. Benson Island, on the northwest corner of the Broken Group, is an important cultural site for the Tseshaht First Nation. The weather was perfect and the scenery was amazingly beautiful.
There were loads of bald eagles …
Seals and sea otters …. with sea otters making a come back in this area to the benefit of the whole ecosystem (sea otters eat oysters which helps maintain healthy kelp beds and so on) …
And, my favourite, the sea lions! Wish I could have recorded the sound of their grumpy barking and grunting. So awesome. 🙂
We had a lovely lunch on the upper deck, with some hummingbirds, who came to snack with us.
Altogether, a great day of sun and sea and wildlife.
One of the things that I love about trips to Tofino with my family is all the fun we have on the beach. Here’s just a taste from this year …
There was playing in the waves with the body boards and stand up paddle boards. My nephew made a great video of all the action.
We rented bikes and I haphazardly took photos while biking and trying not to fall off. My sister and I biked along one morning while my brother-in-law ran. Sure, it looked like we were chasing him down but, whatever! <grin>
The kids spent time flying their kites and my nephew strapped his GoPro to the kite for a unique, if slightly nauseating view. Note that we stayed away from the Charlie Brown kite tree, that is not one of our kites stuck up there!
There were incredible sunsets …
And amazing opportunities to capture the moon.
We took pictures at night, writing our names and making shapes with sparklers. It is remarkably hard to write your name backwards!!!
My sister read (or saw) somewhere about steel wool photography. So, with my ever-creative sister and my ever-enthusiastic niece, we gave it a try. We tied a string to a whisk and then filled the inside with steel wool. We lit the steel wool on fire and gave it a whirl! So much fun!!
And, as always on the beach, there was time to wander and explore and just see what catches the eye.
It goes to show you that the only limits are imagination. I think next year we might have to stay longer!
I have always loved bears – black bears, grizzlies, polar bears. Bears seem to me a symbol of strength, of protection, of connection to the land. And, there is a lesson in hibernation, of rest and reflection.
As opposed to zipping along in a zodiac looking for whales, bear watching involves a covered boat and a slow cruise along the low tide zone. The bears will come out of the woods to the intertidal zone, turn over rocks and snack on rock crabs. Our instructions were, “watch for a moving black rock”.
When we spotted a bear, we all tried to be really quiet until we could see if the bear was comfortable with our presence or not. These bears have very few predators and are generally not afraid of people. There are no roads into this area of Vancouver Island so humans have managed not to encroach on bear territory too much.
The bears in this area are very healthy, as evidenced by their black shiny coats. There is an abundance of food – grasses, berries, rock crab, salmon – so they are pretty large for black bears and may live a little longer than the normal 10 year average. In this day of humans damaging wild habitat, that was nice to hear.
Our first bear we saw was a Momma with a cub. Then, we saw two other bears each on their own. Female bears will have between 1 and 5 cubs. They are impregnated by mating with different males. The female stores the fertilized eggs and then at the end of the season, before hibernating, her body decides how many eggs to implant and gestate, depending on how much salmon she has eaten (aka how many cubs her body can support). Cool, huh?
Got some video of the Momma and cub and of one of the solitary bears; not an easy job with a zoom lens and a moving boat!!!
In addition to the black bears, we saw a bunch of sea lions and seals. Sea lions and seals also look like rocks on the shore; but they blend in more and don’t move as much! I know it’s anthropomorphizing them but they always seem to be smiling and friendly. And, I love they way they sit with their heads up and their tail fins up! The seals and sea lions are resting on the rocks staying out of the way of hungry orca whales until the tides rise again.
Altogether, a fantastic outing. When I was a kid, my parents used to stop at the dump to drop off garbage as we left our cottage. There were often bears there and while I loved seeing them, it made me sad to see them in the garbage. It was so much better to see these amazing, majestic animals in their natural habitat and looking so healthy.
A Fish and a Bicycle 