The Great Bear Rainforest: An amazing experience. First part.

Cathy and I boarded Ocean Wayfinder on October 3rd for a nine day sailing adventure exploring the Great Bear Rainforest.

From the BC government website: The Great Bear Rainforest (GBR) is a global treasure that covers 6.4 million hectares on British Columbia’s north and central coast. All British Columbians have a stake in protecting it.

The Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, between the Coastal First Nations, Nanwakolas Council and the Province of BC, secures the future of the Great Bear Rainforest. Ancient forests and critical wildlife habitat will be protected and conserved. Economic development opportunities and jobs for local communities and First Nations will be maintained. Forest carbon projects will contribute to ensuring First Nations have the resources they need to implement the Agreement.

The agreement still allows lumber companies to operate, we did see some clearcuts, but the integrity of the forest will be maintained under the above agreement. It used to be called the North Coast Timber Supply Area which demonstrates the only thing that was thought valuable in the past. It is a hard won achievement of conservation.

How to proceed with this blog? Day by day, amazing event by amazing event, or just with pictures. A dilemma. Probably a bit of all three, but I never know where it will take me until I write.

The big excitement the first day was picking up a stray guest, more on that after exploring the boat, first we boarded, settled in, and enjoyed our first delicious meal.

Think of the boat as being like the tardis from Doctor Who. Looks small from the outside, but goes on for ever on the inside.

Now to the stray guest, Nancy. She had to join us after we departed, and arrived while we were under full sail. It was quite something for her to transfer from the “taxi” to the skiff, but more so, from the skiff to us. A bit of fine manoeuvring in a sailing sailing boat.

A break from reading and admire Ocean Wayfinder in full sail.

Let me introduce the crew, not least because they were all exceptional at their jobs, but also interesting to get to know. We, both crew and guests, meshed well, and joked and laughed with each other very quickly. And we did not talk about Trump. From now on many of the pictures will have been taken by Gary, Garrit, Mark, Ashely, Maurice (big lenses), and the rest of the guests. My iphone did not cut it for the extra special shots.

Ashley steered us through a couple of interesting situations, more of that later.

Maurice and Ashley have worked together many times on Outer Shores expeditions, and as with Gary they work like a well oiled machine

Gary has worked with orca’s and more currently with humpbacks. His other job is with Ocean Wise. Well worth a look: https://ocean.org/ I thought they just certified sustainable fish, but they do so much more than that, such as studying humpback whales, restoring kelp forests. It rebooted my interest in sustainable seafood, and I found a couple of other organizations on line that seem legitimate. ASC-aqua.org and msc.org. Both have very strict standards for all types of fishing and fish farming. msc.org is the one I have seen the most on cans of tuna. All are international organizations for those of you living outside Canada. Monterey Bay Aquarium is another source of information.

Nick was our chef par excellence. Meal times were eagerly anticipated.

His mouth watering food.

I was amazed to learn that Nick re-supplied his larder from the supermarket in Shearwater, which was about the size of a very large convenience store. The pickings were slim when I shopped there for our meals when we were staying in Shearwater, so big kudos for Nick and his culinary imagination. They like to shop locally. Our first dinner was pear salad with blue cheese and a balsamic dressing, the main course black cod with miso dressing accompanied by roasted fingerling potatoes and peppers. Dessert was lemon cream with berries and roasted pistachios.

On the first full day we began to see humpback whales blowing in the distance. and one fluke, but on day two there were many, and they put on a full show for us.

It was as if they were putting on the display just for us, blowing, surfacing, fluking, breaching, head lobs, chin slapping, cartwheeling and pec slapping. It went on and on. That evening during our days recap we learned about the resurgence of humpbacks in this region and what a new phenomenon our experience was. I think we all felt so lucky.

Others also saw Dall’s porpoises, and we all saw harbour seals.

The very next day was another incredible experience. We spent quite a few hours on a bear watching platform, and there were bears present from very shortly after we arrived. And the very very first bear we saw was a Spirit Bear, or a Kermode bear, and they are rare. Gribbell Island, where we were, is one of the places they are found. Not albino, both black bear parents have to have the recessive gene to produce a white bear.

Marvin said that he thought this Spirit Bear would dominate this part of the river next year. He also said that bears can be picky eaters. Some like live salmon, some freshly dead salmon, some only the egg sack, or rotting, or specific parts of the salmon. Who knew. But he also said that once they start eating salmon they can not stop, something called hyerphagia, a strong desire to keep eating, which causes them to put on a lot of weight in a short period of time. This gets then ready to hibernate. And their lips are so dexterous that they can completely remove the flesh from the bones.As we learned more about the invaluable role of salmon in the Great Bear Rain Forest, not just for the bears, I have begun to wonder if it should be called the Great Salmon Rain Forest.

From https://greatbearrainforesttrust.org/biodiversity/

Salmon are a vital key to the Great Bear Rainforest ecosystem, where more than 2500 salmon runs happen each year. A wide range of plants and animals, as well as humans, benefit from consuming salmon, including killer whales, sharks, sea lions, seals, otters, bears, loons, mergansers, heron and kingfishers. Insects, algae, mosses, terrestrial herbs, shrubs and ancient trees also benefit from marine based nutrients, including nitrogen from salmon.

And enough salmon get through the obstacle course of so many species trying to eat them that they fulfil their mission, to lay eggs or fertilize them. Even then the eggs are not safe. We saw these amazing birds flying around us one day when we were ashore.

Back to the bears.

The Spirit Bear eventually continued up stream and by then a black bear had appeared down stream.

Right in the middle of all the bear watching this little fella appeared from nowhere, well, actually, the forest, and the only person I could tell quickly was Garrit and he got this shot.

There is just so much more to show, not least the grizzly bears and the amazing landscape, that I have to divide this post in two. So off this goes to the ether.