Promise deferred

I was hoping for bears. They had promised me bears. Well, sort of; my friends were going to show me where they had seen several black bears in the Quinsam River a couple of  days before.

The Quinsam River is a short stream that flows into the Campbell River, 20 km. long, as the crow flies, over 40 as it winds down from two small lakes. Good fishing; there are salmon and trout; where we looked down into the water, the salmon jostled each other in the shallow water, big fish, mostly heading upriver to spawn. And where there are spawning salmon, there are bears, fattening up for the winter sleep.

We saw no bears.

But there were pretty green and yellow banana slugs.

Banana slug, Ariolimax columbianus, and moss on a halfway fallen tree.

And even a butterfly.

Cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae, female. (The females have 2 black spots on the forewings.)

It was a beautiful fall day, raining off and on, but the sun shone even through the rain, and the wet forest glistened.

Bottom to top: salal, huckleberry, big-leaf maple, evergreens.

And there were mushrooms everywhere.

Pholiota sp. on a well-aged alder log.

Coral mushroom. 

An unidentified small mushroom, draped in spider web, growing on a snag.

But no bears. I'll just have to go back another day.

I still have another dozen or so photos of mushrooms from that walk to process. Coming up next.

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Quería ver osos. Me habían prometido osos. Bueno, más o menos; mis amigos se ofrecieron a llevarme a donde habían visto los osos en el rio Quinsam hacía dos dias.

El rio Quinsam es un rio corto, tributario del rio Campbell. Corre por 20 kilómetros si se mide en linea recta, unos 40 kilómetros en verdad, bajando serpenteante desde un par de lagos del mismo nombre. La pesca es buena; hay salmones y truchas; donde nos detenimos para mirar el agua, gran número do salmones se retorcían, haciendo que el agua pareciera estar hirviendo. Eran peces grandes, apurándose para llegar a su zona de desove. Y donde hay peces en desove (época de reproducción), hay osos acumulando reservas para los meses de hibernación.

No vimos ningún oso.

Pero hubo babosas "plátano", muy bonitas, vestidas en amarillo y verde:

1. Babosa Ariolimax columbianus en un tronco medio caído.
2. Y una mariposa Pieris rapae. Las hembras tienen las dos manchas negras en cada ala anterior.
3. Era un dia lindo de otoño; llovía en momentos, pero el sol seguía penetrando las nubes aun mientras llovía, y el agua en las hojas del bosque centelleaban.
4. Y por dondequiera había hongos. Estos son del género Pholiota.
5. Hongo coral.
6. Hongo sin identificación creciendo en un tronco muerto.

Pero no vimos osos. Total: tendré que regresar otro dia.

Me quedan sin procesar otra docena de fotos de hongos de ese dia. Ya vendrán.

Low water and dry rocks

 It rained this morning. Gently, for a few minutes, enough to dampen the roads. Too little, too late. But it's a start, anyhow.

The river has been so low that salmon haven't been able to spawn, dying before they have reached the egg-laying sites. Walking along a side channel on Sunday, peering into the water at every clear spot, we saw maybe a half-dozen small fish, a few inches long, and 2 very dead adult salmon.

“There are definitely a lot of (salmon) populations struggling with really low, really warm water. And it presents all kinds of challenges.

When they are in warm water like that, there is less oxygen available and their immune systems become compromised. They are more vulnerable to predators and they have less energy.”

Low water levels can stop them from spawning and even if water comes in, they might not have enough energy to dig a nest and lay eggs by then. (From the Vancouver Sun, Oct 5.)

These are views of the river below the John Hart Dam, taken a couple of weeks ago. The whitish borders of the river mark the normal water level.

Flowing over rocks

Quiet pool.

There's a small post up against the rocks, probably with markings for measuring the water level.

There's still no rain in the weather forecast for the next week.

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Esta mañana llovió. Por unos momentos, levemente, suficiente como para humedecer las calles, y ya. Bueno, es algo, aunque poco y tarde.

El rio anda tan bajo que los salmones no han logrado depositar sus huevas, muriendo antes de llegar a los sitios de siempre. Caminando al lado del rio el domingo, buscando en toda oportunidad en el agua, vimos unos cuantos pescaditos, y dos salmones adultos, bien muertos.

"Definitivamente hay muchas poblaciones de salmones que sufren ahora porque el agua está cálida y no hay suficiente. Esto les presenta muchos retos.

Cuando están en agua tibia, hay menos oxígeno disponible y sus sistemas imunológicos pierden su eficacia. Son más susceptibles a la predación y les falta energías."

Niveles bajos de agua les puede impedir depositar sus huevas, aun si sube el agua, para entonces ya les puede faltar suficiente energía para excavar sus nidos y poner allí las huevas. (Tomado de el Vancouver Sun, el 5 de octubre.)

Fotos: el rio debajo de la presa John Hart, hace quince dias. Se ve por la marca blanquisca el nivel normal del rio. En la tercera foto, se ve un poste blanco en frente de las rocas; este probablemente sirve para medir el nivel del agua.

Y viendo el pronóstico del tiempo, no se ven indicios de lluvia en toda la semana que entra.

Teeth on the shore

Found at the tip of Tyee Spit:

Jawbone, with intact teeth. 3 1/2 inches long. On a piece of driftwood bark for contrast.

This looked, at first glance, like fish bones; flexible bones, very thin, porous. I took it home and Googled "Salmon jaw", and there it was; a long jaw with a line of small teeth behind and large, hooked ones in front. The arrangement varies with the species of salmon; I couldn't pin this one down.

Biting teeth from inside of jaw

Same teeth, outside of jaw. The bone is very porous.

Mature salmon eat smaller fish and invertebrates. The tooth arrangement seems to work for a quick capture and gulp style, with inward-turned hooks in front.

Early supper

I checked the tide tables for Campbell River. Not promising. All the low tides this month and the next fall in the middle of the night. And therefore all those glorious, teeming creatures and seaweeds are out of reach and invisible for the time being.

So I went down to Discovery Harbour Marina. There, the critters rise with the tide; some of them are visible, if not reachable. And there I found anemones, herring, starfish, sponges, spiders (not sea critters, of course, but they're everywhere) and more. Even a hunting seal! (But a whale went by, and I was too low down to see it. Next time, maybe.)

Here's the seal.

Swimming in the shade between the first wharf and the rip rap.

I got just this short glimpse of him before he ducked back underwater. Ten minutes later, walking back to the ramp, I saw him again. This time, he had a mouthful:

Supper is served; fresh salmon steak, and the head, too!

He dove, came up again, gulping salmon in big bites, wolfing it down as a dog does. He went down again, and the ripples faded. I waited a while, but he had gone, taking his leftovers with him. A gull swooped low overhead, but there were no scraps to be found, and he left. So did I.

I'll be processing the rest of the photos for a few days. Herring tomorrow, I think.

Once in a lifetime

It's salmon spawning season in the Bella Coola valley.  Every river and creek is full of them, splashing and twisting, struggling against the current in water that often seems too shallow for swimming, leaping up rocky steps, catching their breath in small eddies.

I went to Clayton Creek to watch them.

The male develops a hump in spawning season.

I think these are pinks, because of the spotted tail.

Clayton Creek runs into North Bentinck Arm (seawater) just below the Bella Coola river mouth. From here, the salmon swim up a shallow, fast stream for a few hundred feet, before things become difficult.

Where the river meets the sea. Easy swimming.

At the first bend of Clayton Creek. Jumping practice.

And only a few feet beyond, roaring Clayton Falls and whirlpool. The salmon climb it.

Somewhere above the falls, the female salmon digs herself a shallow nest (a redd) and lays her eggs. Her mate fertilizes them, and then, exhausted and battered, he drifts back down the creek. The mother will hang around a few days, to make sure her eggs are safe, but then, she too dies and floats downstream. Some spawned-out salmon are caught up top by bears and eagles; some make it to the bottom, but they all die. Their work is done.

One didn't make it up the falls. She was caught and slaughtered, her roe scattered on rocks at the base of the falls.

A male. dead on the sea grasses of the tide flats. At spawning time, they turn red, and develop a hooked jaw.

The females are more subdued. This one has a slight hint of pink, and a bit of a curve in the upper jaw.

And out on the breakwater, sea lions sleep, their tummies full of fish.

One came over to look at me.

In the spring, the young salmon will swim back down the creek, into the wide ocean. And when their turn comes, they will return to the same creek, and climb the same falls that their parents did before them.

A ladder for fishes

Woodhus Creek, part II. (First post)

The wide, sandstone-paved section of Woodhus Creek ends abruptly, top and bottom, entering and leaving through narrow openings in the forest.

Looking upstream. The creek flows from that black hole in the centre.

This was our special place, a room built for us by Ma Nature, unspoiled ... but, no; what's that wall at the right side?

Solid cement walls. No sandstone here.

A fish ladder, about two feet high, with strong cement baffles. It goes from the middle of the flats, up and around the bend, disappearing at the entrance to the bush.

Gentle stream, outside the barrier.

But why is a ladder needed here, where the water flows sedately over smooth stones, meandering from pool to still pool? A spawning salmon could climb this in his sleep! A minnow could navigate it! Why put a fishway here, of all places?

It might help to look at our 2010 photos. We came in June, while the spring floods were not fully abated. A good part of the creek bed was still underwater. And some of this water was white.

A few dry patches, a bit of turbulence. Nothing major, though.

Google maps helped a bit. The creek runs downhill through a narrow, deep gorge, turns a sharp corner, and spills onto the sandstone at high pressure.

Google photo; from the highway, 600 feet above our spot, the creek funnels down to its mouth.

Turbulence and jagged stones, just below the entrance.

In the fall, Coho salmon and cutthroat trout* come up to spawn in the shallow streams beyond the freeway. The water is deeper here then, up to the top of the ladder. It races out of the gorge, and hits a confusing choice of channels. Look closely at the photo above; water enters that pothole from three different angles, churning around as it finds the exit. Now imagine two feet of water above that.

These are smallish fish; the adult Coho averages about 8 pounds and a bit over 2 feet long. The cutthroat trout goes from 1 to 4 pounds, and up to 20 inches long. (Compare with the Chinook salmon; over 30 pounds and 3 feet long.) Both spawn in small streams, where the hatchlings and fry are protected from larger fish.

The Woodhus Creek salmon have grown to adulthood in the ocean. When the cold weather comes, they head up the Oyster River to the entrance to the creek, then up the canyon to the watershed above the highway, always coming back to the streamlet where they hatched. The stocks have been in decline in recent years; the cutthroat trout is blue-listed in BC, the Coho is yellow-listed and endangered. They need all the help they can get.

How the fish ladder works: this ladder is a Vertical Slot Fishway. It slopes upward, divided into individual "rooms", each opening onto the next on the perpendicular to the direction of the stream. This creates doorways with strong enough current to orient the fish, and corners with little current, for a resting spot. The total flow is longer than the stream bed, which makes the slope less pronounced.

Detail of the ladder. Even a small cutthroat can make it safely home here.

Ok. I'll go with what I wrote above: "a room built for us by Ma Nature, unspoiled ...". With the addition of the builders of the fishway, ORES. The salmon and we thank you!

*Oncorhynchus is a genus of fish in the family Salmonidae; it contains the Pacific salmons and Pacific trouts. The name of the genus is derived from the Greek onkos ("hook") and rynchos ("nose"), in reference to the hooked jaws of males in the mating season (the "kype"). (Wikipedia)

Not quite empty

If I hadn't been so out of shape, we would have missed them. The salmon, that is.

Maybe it would be better to begin at the beginning. This summer has been difficult at times, and we have been forced to stick to easy walking spots, no steep hills nor difficult rock scrambles. But we've been hankering for the cliffs, and finally decided, on Wednesday, that we could handle some stairs. A couple of hundred of them, and then a steep, slippery trail ending in a crawl over rip-rap, to the rocky shore at Kwomais Point.

My legs weren't quite ready for it. By the time we were at the bottom, my knees were wobbly, and I stumbled on the loose rocks at water's edge.

It had been sunny when we set out, but by the time we'd parked at the top of the trail, a heavy mist was rolling in over the sea. At the second lookout, a rock just above the lower treetops, all there was to see was a horizon line dividing grey from blue-grey.

Plus a couple of birds in the distance

Below, we were entranced by the light over the water; the islands in the distance had disappeared, and we took photo after photo of nothing at all, trying to catch the subtle changes of wave and sky.

But the sea wasn't quite empty; as we reached the shore, a flock of surf scoters surfaced. A minute later, they all went under again, fishing. They moved further out, but occasionally we saw them, a sprinkling of black dots, sometimes showing a flash of the white on the back of the head before they vanished again.

And on a rock nearby, a couple of harlequin ducks rested. Near them a few more were diving for supper.

Three female harlequins

Pair of harlequins, male and female.

A distant loon, one of three or four.

And here's where being out of shape comes in. We had a long hike ahead of us, straight up that hill. And my knees were still shaky. I found a handy rock and sat down to rest up, to be ready for the climb. (Not my usual style, at all; there's always another rock I want to turn over, another tidepool to examine.) After a while Laurie joined me, and we sat, looking at the almost empty water.

And then a fish jumped. A big salmon. Another. Another, and another, all in the same small area. They kept it up, leaping high into the air, sometimes straight up, then coming straight down, tail first. Others belly-flopped, sending up great splashes of water.

Something must have been fishing under there, something big. A sea lion, probably. We watched closely. A couple of times I saw something roll partway out of the water, and down again, like the coil of a mythical sea-serpent. No heads of sea lions appeared, though.

We had to get a photo of this! We both sat there on the rock until we were chilled, peering through the viewfinders with the cameras focussed, waiting. We took photos of places where the salmon had jumped a second ago. We were waiting when the salmon jumped off to our left or right. Laurie gave up. I waited for one more. And missed, but not completely.

Salmon splash.

Enough; I was rested, and we climbed up the rocks, the trail, the steps again. At least it's easier on old knees going up.

As soon as my legs stop aching, we'll do it again.

A Skywatch post.