British Columbia Magazine

Wildlife Wednesday is a popular day on our Facebook fan page. We ask our Fans to tell us what wildlife they’ve seen in the province–and the answers always astound me. This week’s winner, chosen randomly, was Keri Brewster, who shared:

“The other day, I saw a family of otters playing right beside the seawall. There was a mom and two young ones, and they were eating crabs and chasing each other and wrestling with each other and just having so much fun! It was the cutest, neatest thing I’ve seen in years!”

Keep those wildlife sighting stories coming–and stay connected with us via our Facebook page for more giveaways.

My kayak and I tip the scales at about 70 kilograms.

A humpback whale? Well over 25 tonnes.

Yet it was far more exhilarating than frightening to have one suddenly pop up 10 metres away while I was kayaking the Broken Group, in Barkley Sound off Vancouver Island, earlier this month.

For half an hour, my group — Janie Tyerman, Sandy Ferguson, David Bonner, and Al Stockwell — and I enjoyed watching several humpbacks breach dramatically in the distance in the rough waters of Imperial Eagle Channel.

Then we decided to continue our paddle, closely rounding the east side of Dempster Island, where we saw another humpback approaching. We held our position for several seconds until small fish began to dance on the surface, then, watched in awe as the humpback broke the water surface, jaws wide open, in a dramatic display known as lunge feeding.

Another kayaker coming in the opposite direction, Laura Lavine, of Ladysmith, managed to snap this photo just as the whale was going back down.

“Out of the water the Humpy exploded 30 feet from our flotilla” she recalls. “Amazing and exhilarating!”

Our Winter 2010 cover story (on newsstands and in subscribers’ mailboxes any day now) features facts on the cougar — one of British Columbia’s most powerful predators. While cougar attacks of humans are rare in this province, those who venture into the wilderness should know what to do in case of an encounter. We provide a few critical words of advice. See “What to do if you meet a cougar” by Jenny Manzer.

As someone who has spent hours peering over the sides of ferries and wharfs, entranced by the rhythmic pulsing and delicate beauty of jellyfish, I wish to offer my condolences to the Vancouver Aquarium’s new cross jellies. It seems a pair of them have arrived with a most unfortunate problem — a parasitic anemone that “looks like a large, thick, white blob” hanging from their gonads.

I don’t mean to anthropomorphize, but . . . yikes.

The aquarium’s press release explains that, once ingested by a cross jelly, the parasitic anemone begins to chow down on its host’s stomach tissues. This continues for 11 days, before the “jelly-dwelling anemone” migrates to the jelly’s sex organs. “It will continue to feed on the jelly for roughly 31 days, until it acquires its adult characteristics.”

If you’d like to get a firsthand look at this gonad-feeding parasite, stop by the aquarium ASAP. They expect the anemones to stay attached to the host jellies for another few days before dropping to the floor (where, if left alone, they would live out the rest of their life cycle.)

No word on whether the cross jellies are expected to make a full recovery (or require counseling).

For more interesting jellyfish facts, see the “Secrets of Jellyfish” in our Winter 2006 issue.

Just try not to say awwww! This photograph of an adorable seal pup comes to us from reader Brenda Johima, a photographer and artist living in Vancouver Island’s Fanny Bay. She was exploring Tofino’s Long Beach recently when she happened upon the animal. Armed with a telephoto lens, Johima plopped down in the wet sand a good distance away, so as not to disturb the animal, and composed several shots.

“I LOVE wildlife, and as a photographer, it is always exciting to find something totally unexpected,” she says.

Have you had a close encounter with B.C. wildlife? Submit your experiences to www.shareyourbc.com for a chance to win a one-year subscription to British Columbia Magazine.

Every four years, salmon runs on the Horsefly River reach a cyclical peak. 2009 is the year we’ve been waiting for, and folks in the Cariboo community of Horsefly are marking the occasion with a festival on September 5 and 6.

While recent news about British Columbia’s declining salmon stocks has been bleak, Horsefly hopes to welcome home a million spawning sockeye this fall. Education is the focus of activities planned for the weekend, with information about water quality and aquatic invertebrates, as well as fish-dissection demonstrations.

Gutting fish not your idea of a good time? There will also be musical entertainment, a potluck, and a family square dance.

It takes the sockeye approximately 28 days to journey from the Pacific Ocean up the Fraser River, then along the Quesnel River to the mouth of the Horsefly River and its spawning grounds. Only 15 to 50 percent of the adult fish that set out on the 760-kilometre journey survive past the commercial fishing areas of the lower Fraser.

For more on the Horsefly River, see our Fall 2008 story “Protecting B.C. with TLC” (full article online here.)

For details on the Horsefly River Salmon Festival, visit www.horseflyriver.ca. There’s even an online video so you can see what it’s all about.

Wolverines don’t share well.

In my family of six, I learned to claim my share of treats—cinnamon buns, cookies, or other tasty food—as soon as Mom pulled them from the grocery bag. If I didn’t, the goodies could be gone long before my stomach rumbled.

My siblings and I developed tactics for protecting our fair share. We hid food in dark recesses of the fridge and cupboards, where we thought no one would look. We stockpiled granola bars and nectarines in our school backpacks and lockers. And, when squaring off over the last morsels of a particular delicacy, would look one another square in the eye and lick our portion. No one would steal it then!

If you think that’s gross, be glad you didn’t grow up among wolverines. This carnivore is known to spray its leftovers with a smelly musk and come back to eat it later. It seems that saliva doesn’t suffice in the wolverine world.

Moral of this story? As associate editor Jenny Manzer quips, “Never follow a wolverine in a buffet line-up.”

Head to Castlegar this week for your chance to meet one of British Columbia’s most fascinating fish, face to face.

On Wednesday, April 22nd, the public is invited to help release juvenile white sturgeon by hand into the Columbia River.

The young fish to be let into the wild are only 15 to 25 centimetres long and weigh approximately 60 grams, but may ultimately grow as big as a canoe and live for 100 years!

White sturgeon have existed since prehistoric times, but are now struggling to survive due to habitat degradation, water contamination, poaching, and other factors. Approximately 10,000 10-month-old sturgeon have been released into B.C.’s Columbia River over the last seven years in an attempt to shore up this population (one of six in the province), while biologists search for more long-term solutions. There are perhaps 1,000 adults in the B.C. portion of the Columbia today.

The release, hosted by the Fish & Wildlife Compensation Program, will take place at Hugh Keenleyside Dam from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. For more on white sturgeon, check out “The amazing sturgeon” in the Fall 2008 issue of British Columbia Magazine.

If you build it, they will come.

Head to Creston this coming Wednesday, March 4, to help construct nest boxes for endangered western screech-owls.

Native to British Columbia’s southern Interior, the macfarlanei subspecies of western screech-owl (Megascops kennicottii) primarily inhabits the Okanagan Valley. The small, nocturnal, non-migratory bird prefers to nest in the cavities of mature cottonwood trees, but has suffered serious habitat loss and degradation in recent years. Only 50 to 200 individuals remain in the province. While nest boxes are not a permanent fix, they do provide temporary nesting and roosting sites.

The Columbia Basin’s Fish & Wildlife Compensation Program is hosting this family-friendly event. Pre-registration is required (info@fwcp.ca). Cost: $10 for materials. The workshop will get underway at 7 p.m. at the Rotocrest Hall in Creston.

Loyal readers of this blog: please forgive my recent fixation with aquatic critters. I can’t resist posting one more entry about octopuses — slimy, slinky, eight-armed wonders that they are.

Susan Rybar of Victoria was waiting on shore for some friends to complete a dive off the city’s Ogden Point when one of them surfaced with an old medicine bottle and placed it at her feet. Out of the bottle squirmed a tiny octopus! It stuck around long enough for Susan to snap this photograph before it wriggled back into the water.

James Cosgrove, British Columbia’s resident cephalopod expert, says Susan’s photo shows either a juvenile giant Pacific octopus (Enteroctopus dofleini), or a ruby octopus (Octopus rubescens), also known as the Pacific red octopus. It is common to find the young of either species taking shelter in cans and bottles in shallow water.

Watch for Cosgrove’s new book Super Suckers: The Giant Pacific Octopus and Other Cephalopods of the Pacific Northwest (Harbour Publishing) this March. The text will include fascinating factoids, new research on octopus behaviour, anecdotes and legends, as well as underwater photographs taken by regular British Columbia Magazine contributor Neil McDaniel.