Little bird in a big ocean

In the black hours of early morning, a tiny bird emerges from its shallow burrow on the top of a wind-swept rocky island and launches itself out over the wild Pacific Ocean. This female Cassin's auklet is not much to look at – barely larger than a robin and considerably less colourful, with only a tiny white eyebrow as a marking. She has been described as a 'flying tennis ball', built more for diving than for flying, but she has a long way to go to find food for her chick. While her mate rests for the day, she takes her turn at flying out to the edge of the deep water, a one-way trip of up to 100 km. It will be dark again before she returns from her exhausting flight with food for her young safely tuck away in a special pouch in her throat.

Photos from the coast: the good, the bad and the hopeful

Unless you've been hiding out under a rock in a cave on the dark side of the moon, humming to yourself really loudly with your fingers in you ears, you've probably picked up on a bit of the recent media frenzy over the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline and associated tanker route through some of B.C.'s most treacherous waters.

Wow, that was a long sentence. But that doesn't make it any less true.

The controversy over the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines Project, which could see as many as 320 supertankers visit the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest every year, has surfaced in the media to varying degrees over the past couple of years. But coverage of this proposed development really kicked into high gear last week when B.C. Premier Christy Clark announced that she was taking a long-awaited stand on the project by laying out a list of five requirements the project would need to meet in order for the B.C. government to support it. Well... sort of.

In fact, the first four requirements laid out by the premier are measures that are either already required or will do nothing to safeguard the B.C. coast. The only relevant demand that Premier Clark outlined was the requirement for B.C. to receive it's "fair share" of the profits from this project. Putting aside the legal and constitutional can of worms that this opens, the Premier is saying basically this: If the price is right, we are willing to accept the admittedly grave risk that the Northern Gateway Pipelines Project presents to the B.C. coast.

Hmmm...

Scott Islands - What do they mean to you?

Of the many amazing places on the outer coast of British Columbia, there are few more spectacular this time of year than the Scott Islands. This rugged archipelago stretches out for 50 km to the northwest of Cape Scott (the northwest tip of Vancouver Island and the western terminus of the world-renown North Coast Trail), and teams with seabirds between March and September. In fact, the outer three Islands (Baresford, Sartine, and Triangle) are home to over two million auklets, murres, puffins and storm petrels.

As mentioned in the text, the land portions of these islands are already protected as provincial ecological reserves, but there is currently no protection for the surrounding waters. The Canadian Wildlife Service is currently setting up a marine National Wildlife Area in the waters around these islands to protect the rich marine environment where birds find food for themselves and for their chicks.

What the video doesn’t mention is that the rich ecosystem around the islands also supports many other bird species that don’t nest in the area, such as Marbled Murrelet (which nest in the adjacent old-growth forests), Black-footed Albatross (which have six-foot wing spans and nest in Hawaii and Japan), and Sooty Shearwater (which come from as far away as Australia and New Zealand). Many marine mammals frequent the area including Grey, Humpback, Blue and Killer, Baird’s beaked, Minke, and Sperm whales as well as Dahl’s and Harbour porpoise. The rocky islands provide a haul-out for Northern fur seal and the largest breeding colony of Steller’s sea lions in Canada (the second largest in the world).