A rescue and a rant

The tides are at their peak for the year in Boundary Bay, reaching to over 14 feet at high tide, in the middle of the day, and dropping to as low as 1.5 feet around midnight. Compare that, for example, to last July, when the high tide was around 12 feet, and the low just over 7. (And in the daytime, for our wading and exploring pleasure!)

The king tides occur when the Earth, Moon and Sun are aligned at perigee and perihelion, resulting in the largest tidal range seen over the course of a year. So tides are enhanced when the Earth is closest to the sun around January 2nd of each year. They are reduced when it is furthest from the sun, around July 2nd. (Wikipedia)

That's still not an extreme rise and drop, as tides go, but the water has to race in over a mile of flat beach, so the current is strong. Even on a calm day, the waves pound hard on the shore at the high tide line, bringing a load of vegetation, critters, driftwood, and unfortunately, junk with it, and then scouring the sand clean again, as the water roars back out.

A few days ago, at the boat ramp, a tangle of eelgrass was tumbling back and forth, just within the reach of the highest waves. And rolling with it was an unlucky hermit crab, caught without his shell, and unable to get his footing before each new wave caught him and tossed him back onto the cement. I waded in and caught him, and deposited him gently on the wet eelgrass in my bag. I couldn't find a shell for him, but he'd be safe there.

He was hiding under the eelgrass in the bag when we got home, and very jittery; I let him rest in a bowl under a piece of Turkish towel until I found him a selection of shells. A couple of hours later I transferred him, in his chosen shell, to the tank. And he immediately attacked the nearest hermit, a big, no-nonsense male twice his size, and wouldn't let go. I separated them, and he jumped on the next in line, and bullied her out of her shell, which he appropriated.

Not the mild, agreeable hermit behaviour I was used to seeing!

Put it down to panic. By the next morning, he was fitting in fine, sharing food, taking his turn, allowing others to ride on his back. He'd found his spot in the pecking order and all is well.

Other animals weren't quite so lucky. We found this dying nudibranch, still plump and glossy, dumped at the high tide line.

A mid-sized Melibe leonina, with her hood spread out, the teeth still firm at the rim. She's been eating something red or pink.

On the last two trips, I passed dead gulls. No, I didn't take photos; they were a disgusting mess. Maybe I should have. Because I was also collecting bags full of plastic, the stuff that kills seabirds.

There were the usual bottle caps, bits of broken toys, abandoned water bottles - "Pure Spring Water"! - one flip-flop (did the owner hop home?), and candy wrappers. Birds' guts end up full of that stuff; it looks bright and appetizing, and is swallowed too fast for them to realize it's inedible.

But what was worst was the plastic film, the transparent food wrap that, drifting in slow water, looks exactly like a lazy jellyfish. Appetizing, if you're a duck, or a gull. And deadly; it either chokes the bird outright, or clogs up his digestive system so that he can starve to death in the middle of a feast.

I got a full bag of that wrap, along with a few disposable gloves; their fingers fill with water and they wash to and fro, looking juicy. Sort of like that nudibranch above; about the same colour, too.

Why do people leave that sort of stuff on a beach?

A woman saw me dumping my load in a handy garbage container, (put there for that purpose, people!) and thanked me. Good; but wouldn't it be better if everyone put their junk in the barrels in the first place?

What the tide washed in

The tide comes in slower in White Rock than in Boundary Bay; without the need to run almost a mile straight inland, I can wade along the edge to see what's floating in the waves.

There are always piles of tangled seaweeds.

And a few individual ones, usually rockweed.

Sometimes the seaweed incorporates driftwood into the pile. This lot included many tiny spiral tubeworms, and a handful of stubby isopods.

Some of the seaweeds are faded, unidentifiable ghosts.

Not all; this hairy weed keeps its vibrant colour even as it rots.

Land-based leaves return home, eroded by the salt water.

So does an unfortunate ladybug.

The molted remains of a purple shore crab.

The waves bring back sand that they took away earlier.

Homo sapiens, var. intertidalus, returning to land with the tide. The gulls will stay put until the water brings them supper.

All is well. But there are other "goodies" coming in on the waves:

Plastic rope.

A large plastic bag.

"Pure Life", it reads. "Eau de source naturelle". (Water from a natural source.)  Good stuff, great for the environment. (/sarcasm)

More "Pure Life".

And tinfoil. Garlic-flavoured something or other.

Why I pick up all the plastics and tinfoil I find:

Recently dead gull. We looked it over; there was no sign of injury or disease. Every feather was clean and in order. The bent-back head, without other evidence of illness, suggests possible asphyxiation. Caused by trying to eat a plastic bag, maybe?

I would love to put up large signs along the parking lane, reading, "PLASTIC BAGS KILL GULLS". But would they do any good?

The price of convenience

Warning; this post may give you bad dreams. Read it anyway; it's important.

Every so often, we come across an unpleasant sight on our beaches. A dead seabird, usually a gull. We always take photos, but at home, I delete them; they are too sad to share. I changed my mind; here is a gull we found a couple of days ago.

Found just above the high tide line. No visible injury.

Recently dead; the eye is still bright, the surrounding flesh, pink.

I have seen a few live gulls with broken wings or injured feet, but the ones we find dead have uniformly seemed uninjured. What killed them?

The most likely culprits are the plastic bags and/or other plastic debris left on the beaches by human beach visitors. As I walk on the beach, we collect any bags we see, and take them to the nearest - accusingly near! - trash can. This last time, I filled a grocery bag (also found on the sand) with other bags, plastic cups, and even a broken toothbrush.

Gulls are particularly vulnerable to this abandoned trash. When I was a kid, I watched a gull on our beach down a huge pile of fish guts. The mass was all connected, and the gull had to struggle and strain to get it all down. I was astounded when he succeeded. Even an entire grocery bag is more maneuverable and smaller than that; the sheer difficulty of swallowing it would not be a deterrent. Lying in water, half-buried in sand, the bags look surprisingly like bits of fish skin, or jellyfish. They even smell like food, as often as not.

All this is well known; entering "Gulls plastic bag die" into Google brought up over 73,000 sites. One of the first was this; "Gulls can't read ...", incorporating this video.

(One of the comments on YouTube asks why the photographer didn't stop this. The answer is in the post: "He was in an elevated postion and was unable to go the herring gull's resuce - but the reality of what was unfolding before his eyes meant he kept his camera on.")


Researchers estimate that around 95% of all sea birds have eaten plastic litter. (Here, here, and here.) Worse still, is the multiplying lethality of these bags; after a killed gull rots away, the plastic, still intact, is released into the sea to lay in wait for another luckless bird or other animal (a turtle, a whale, etc.) And again, and again. The bag will last for centuries. (Even a so-called "bio-degradable" bag will remain intact for a long, long time. And once it has broken down, the plastic is still there, just in tiny pieces. It can still kill; it just won't choke a gull.)


Thanks for watching and "listening". You know what to do.

Philosophical question, sort of...

Why is it that I can take photos of a squashed crab I find on the beach, or of the innards of a dead nudibranch or a skeletonised fish without a qualm, but when I come across a freshly-dead seagull, I feel that I am invading its privacy by pointing the camera in its direction?

Not that that stopped me for more than a couple of seconds. Here is the seagull:


It was clean and bright, with no smell, no other signs of deterioration. Nor of injury, although I didn't flip it over to be sure.

But it was so beautiful, even in death, that I had to zoom in for a close-up or two.

The underside of the wing, with raindrops.

And the beak, showing the red spot. Which has its own black spot. Interesting curves and angles. And a stylish nostril.

And the breast feathers, seen up close, were eye-blinding white, much too bright for the camera, brighter even than they seem when I see gulls in flight. Only the eye, that challenging, curious, proud seagull eye, was dulled and sad.

I keep wondering, now, what killed it? And left it high and dry at the edge of the park?
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