Green Vancouver

The City of Vancouver is transforming many of its ways to comply with a more environmentally friendly agenda. The plans are laid out on the city web site. I met with several staff the other day who are leading the change and it was good news to hear. I applaud the city for taking these steps.

The City could also become a ‘blue’ city. Vancouver is located on the seashore of the Strait of Georgia. Its harbour separates Vancouver from West and North Vancouver and connects to the east with Burnaby and Port Moody. It is a seaside city.

The harbour is one of Canada’s Important Bird Areas. In winter, more than 15 000 birds feed along its shores. About 13,000 of those birds are sea ducks –  surf scoters, Barrows and common goldeneye, and greater scaup. They mingle among the harbours ships and piers, along its rocky shores at Stanley Park and West Vancouver and up Indian Arm. Mew and glaucous-winged gulls are also abundant. Cormorants nest under bridges. Near Port Moody, very large seastars live on the ocean floor.  Salmon spawn in the Indian River, Mossom and Noons Creek in Port Moody, and the rivers on the north shore.

One of the concepts we are working on at the Pacific WildLife Foundation is to get more of the citizens of Vancouver on to the water to see the wildlife around us. If all goes well, we hope to launch the green lifeboat this year. Stay posted.

 

 

New Discoveries and New Opportunities

Just when I thought we were beginning to understand how the Salish Sea ecosystem functions, new surprises have begun to pop up. In the past few months there have been reports of very large flocks of common murres and ancient murrelets in the Strait of Georgia. Both these species occur here but the number of birds has birders abuzz. In Puget Sound a Bryde’s whale, ringed seal and repeated sightings of pilot whales are creating a stir. What puzzles me is whether unusual species and sightings such as these reflect more eyes on the water, a greater interest in marine life, or some ecological change taking place.

To answer these questions requires at least two important things to happen. First, we need to have more information on a regular basis of our marine life. Much of that information in the past has been collected by scientists but with the electronic age upon us, there has been a resurgence of the role of the amateur marine biologist. Programs such as Bird Studies Canada’s Coastal Waterbird Survey, Orcanet and the Vancouver Aquariums’ cetacean sighting network are a few examples. Engaging the public in citizen science projects such as these can be of great help in collecting data over wide geographical areas. There are issues about data collection protocols and the data that  one can and should expect amateurs to collect but those can be overcome.

Second, we need a better understanding of the ecology of the ocean to put these changes in perspective. Our understanding of marine ecosystems is in its infancy. The analysis requires a high level of skill best done by professionals in government, university and private labs. There is some resistance between these groups but I am seeing a willingness to explore collaborations. It could prove fruitful ground for both groups and for all of us.

Changing Lives

One of the things that brings satisfaction is when we can affect career paths of young students. A few summers ago, the Pacific WildLife Foundation helped organize a trip for students and faculty from The Netherlands to see grizzly bears on the coast. We took them along the coast stopping at a salmon spawning river where we knew bears to be present. We saw many bears there, white-sided dolphins in northern Georgia Strait and much more. One of the graduate students on the trip wrote me recently to say:

“I am already working as a postdoc in a conservation genetics unit here in Germany. The funny thing is that the trip brought me very close to my (then unknown) professional future: My study objects are now large carnivores, such as wolf, brown bear, lynx…”

Changing lives can sometime arise from new experiences such as the one I describe, but it can also happen when young people are encouraged to pursue their dreams. That encouragement is of special interest to the Pacific WildLife Foundation. We would like to establish student support for this purpose. Contact us if you might be able to help.

 

 

Origins

Our lives are a mix of experiences from people we meet, places we visit and events that unfold. Sometimes it is an individual that plays an important role by showing us how to look at something in a new way. Milton Wong was one of those people. Milton died on Saturday after a career as a successful businessman, entrepreneur and humanitarian. He is well known in Vancouver circles for his support of social causes. I had the good fortune to meet him while he was Chancellor of Simon Fraser University. He asked me to join him to establish a collaborative institute to address environmental issues. The concept did not catch on but I learned a lot about how to visualize and build an organization. The idea stewed in my mind for several years and in 2003, a group of friends and colleagues established the Pacific WildLife Foundation. It was this meeting with Milton that inspired the idea of our foundation.

Vancouver Harbour on New Year’s Eve Day

There are moments when a new discovery opens our eyes to something we overlooked far too long. Today was one of those days. I met up with Rod MacVicar and Tom Middleton from Pacific WildLife Foundation to do a reconnaissance visit of birds in Vancouver Harbour. I had watched birds from Stanley Park at the western end of Vancouver for many years and knew of the large rafts of seaducks there in winter. English Bay once held many thousand western grebes and surf scoters that qualified it for an Important Bird Area. Few western grebes have been seen for many years although scoters are still a familiar species there. However, I was not prepared for the large flocks among the industrial areas of the harbour. There were flocks of several thousand surf scoters and one large flock of more than a thousand greater scaups among the freighters.  Why the birds are in the harbour is not entirely clear although I suspect they are eating mussels and barnacles clinging to the wharves and piers. This was some good news to end a year.

Discoveries and Explorations

The year 2011 at the Pacific WildLife Foundation was eventful with some intriguing new discoveries. Jim Darling and Tim Frasier published their findings on the genetics of gray whales. It was widely believed that the eastern Pacific gray whales belonged to one large herd. Then Jim and Tim showed that the whales that spent the summer along the BC coast were genetically different from the rest of the herd. This discovery suggested that there might distinct groups among the herd that warranted particular management.

Also with whales, Jim Darling, Rod MacVicar and Rob Butler were in Maui working on Jim’s project to understand why humpbacks sing where they photographed a whale that was at least 30 years old (see previous post).

Also in 2011, we got a clearer picture of the migration routes of a seaduck known as the Barrows goldeneye. Most of the world population of this sea duck spends the winter on the north Pacific coast. Its nesting grounds in the interior of British Columbia was well known but where it moulted its feathers was a mystery. Sean Boyd and Dan Esler attached satellite radios to a few of the ducks that allowed the birds to be tracked through the year. They knew that many ducks flew to lakes in Alberta but they also found out that some went north to moult their feathers before returning to the coast in autumn.

Pacific WildLife is a partner in the BC BreedingBird Atlas that is drawing to a close soon. We helped out by going on an exploration along the eastern side of the Strait of Georgia to record breeding birds including documentation of several small seabird colonies. These data along with the entire atlas data set for BC are displayed in maps of each species that you see on the web site.

We got started on an Important Cetacean Area (ICA) project this year. The aim is to identify places that are important for feeding, nursing, where large numbers of cetaceans habitually frequent, and so on. We have been visiting colleagues, drawing maps and much more that we will soon post on our web site. Funding for this project came from the Foundation and an anonymous donor.

There is much more going on in the Foundation and several new projects that will begin in 2012.  We have some new Fellows who are bringing fresh ideas too. The Foundation began over three decades ago as West Coast Whale Research and changed its name to Pacific WildLife in 2003. Most of our funding comes from research grants but we are are especially grateful to donors who provide us with support with no strings attached. This support allows the Foundation to delve into new projects, such as the ICA. If you would like to know more about us, click on the our web site or drop us a note.

 

 

Among Giants

While in Hawaii, we stayed next door to Flip Nicklin, photographer for National Geographic. Flip is known far and wide for his stunning underwater photographs of whales. He has spent a lifetime diving among the giant animals in Hawaii, the Canadian Arctic, Patagonia, Sri Lanka to name a few. He brought home images of these animals as never seen before and a treasure chest of stories.

In 1979, scientists were pioneering studies of whales in the wild. The problem was that the whales only spent a brief moment on the surface to get a gulp of air. All the action was taking place beneath the waves and out of sight. The scientists had discovered that humpbacks off Maui were singing but they could not see what the animals were doing. Flip literally dove into the research and took the first picture of a singing whale. It became known as Frank. Flip’s career was launched and he would spend three decades taking whale portraits.

Flip has a new book out called Among Giants – A Life with Whales published by University of Chicago Press.  It tells the story of Flips life as a National Geographic photographer along with brief entries by some of the scientists he has worked with over the years. It is illustrated with some of the photographs that made Flip famous. I have a treasured copy sitting prominently on my book shelf.